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®^e jBoiile lertureg^ 



THE MESSAGE OF CHRIST TO MAN- 
HOOD. Being the William Belden Noble 
Lectures for 1898, by Alexander V. G. 
Allen, Francis G. Peabody, Theodore 
T. Hunger, William DeWitt Hyde, 
Henry Van Dyke, and Henry C. Potter. 
With a Portrait of William Belden Noble. 
i2mo, ^1.25. 

CHRISTIAN ORDINANCES AND SOCIAL 
PROGRESS. The Noble Lectures at Har- 
vard University for 1900. By The Very 
Reverend W. H. Fremantle, D. D., Dean 
of Ripon. i2mo, $1.50. 

HOUGHTON, MIFFLIN «& COMPANY, 

Boston and New York. 



CHRISTIAN ORDINANCES 

AND 

SOCIAL PROGRESS 

BEING THE 

i©illtam 25eltien i^oBle %tttutt^ 

FOR 1900 

BY 
THE HON. AND VERY REV. 

WILLIAM HENRY FREMANTLE, D. D. 

DEAN OF RIPON 










^ *^' « 



BOSTON AND NEW YORK 
HOUGHTON, MIFFLIN AND COMPANY 

1901 



1 



THE LIBRARY OF 
CONGRESS, 

Two Copies Received 

APR. 18 1901 

Copyright entry 

CL'ASS<XxXc. n«. 

COPY B. 



»s> 



COPYRIGHT, I90I, BY WILLIAM HENRY FREMANTLE 
ALL RIGHTS RESERVED 



>> 



THE WILLIAM BELDEN NOBLE LECTURES 



This Lectureship was constituted a perpetual foundation 
in Harvard University in 1898, as a memorial to the late 
William Belden Noble of Washington, D. C. (Harvard, 
1885). The deed of gift provides that the lectures shall be 
not less than six in number, that they shall be delivered 
annually, and, if convenient, in the Phillips Brooks House, 
during the season of Advent. Each lecturer shall have 
ample notice of his appointment, and the publication of 
each course of lectures is required. The purpose of the 
Lectureship will be further seen in the following citation 
from the deed of gift by which it was established : — 

" The object of the founder of the Lectures is to continue 
the mission of William Belden Noble, whose supreme de- 
sire it was to extend the influence of Jesus as the way, the 
truth, and the life ; to make known the meaning of the words 
of Jesus, * I am come that they might have life, and that 
they might have it more abundantly.' In accordance with 
the large interpretation of the Influence of Jesus by the 
late Phillips Brooks, with whose religious teaching he in 
whose memory the Lectures are established and also the 
founder of the Lectures were in deep sympathy, it is in- 
tended that the scope of the Lectures shall be as wide as 
the highest interests of humanity. With this end in view, 
— the perfection of the spiritual man and the consecration 
by the spirit of Jesus of every department of human char- 
acter, thought, and activity, — the Lectures may include 
philosophy, literature, art, poetry, the natural sciences, poli- 
tical economy, sociology, ethics, history both civil and ec- 
clesiastical, as well as theology and the more direct interests 
of the religious life. Beyond a sympathy with the purpose 
of the Lectures, as thus defined, no restriction is placed 
upon the lecturer." 



PREFACE 

The William Belden Noble Lectures were 
founded, in memory of her husband, by the 
widow of a young American clergyman of 
that name, who died early. Their object is 
best described in the extract from the deed 
of gift printed on the foregoing page. Only 
two courses have been previously given : the 
first by six different lecturers; the second 
by Professor Palmer, of Harvard University. 
The course now pubhshed was given in No- 
vember and December, 1900. Circumstances 
have not allowed of so close a revision of them 
as I should have desired, nor of the addition 
of notes, or of what the French call " pieces 
justificatives.'' The lectures are pubhshed 
as they were delivered ; but I have, in this 
composition, carefully reviewed the documents 
on which I rely, and I trust that I have made 
no misstatements of fact or quotation. 



vi PREFACE 

The lectures were delivered in the Phillips 
Brooks House at Harvard. This house, 
which was founded in memory of the great 
Bishop, is in itself an emblem of the width of 
his sympathy and his teaching. It forms a 
centre for the religious life of the University. 
On the ground floor are a library and rooms 
for social intercourse ; above these are, on one 
side, the rooms of the Young Men's Christian 
Association, and, on the other, those of a simi- 
lar society for the Episcopalians ; and on the 
upper floor a library and reading-room for 
the Roman Catholics, and the large hall in 
which these lectures were delivered. 

The title of these lectures in the main ex- 
plains their purpose ; and I hope that the dis- 
cussion of it may meet some of the religious 
needs of our time. The system of religious 
ordinances, which is sometimes, though too 
exclusively, identified with the Church, seems 
to need a closer connection with the social 
progress at which all Christian bodies are in 
some way aiming. This connection I beheve 
to have been both helped and hindered by 



PREFACE vii 

the ideas which have been dominant in Anglo- 
Saxon Christianity during the last half cen- 
tury. The Oxford Movement^ the effects of 
which have been felt far beyond the bounds 
of Anglicanism, was not a High Church 
movement in the sense of exalting the Church, 
but in the sense of exalting the system of pub- 
lic worship and its ministers. It encouraged 
the corporate and social idea of life, and so 
far was a help to the object aimed at in these 
lectures ; but it was a hindrance to that ob- 
ject in that it restricted the social idea to the 
fellowship of those bound together by ordi- 
nances ; and it narrowed this fellowship still 
further by practically imposing the condition 
of adherence to the ordinances of the Episco- 
palian church system. This was done on the 
supposition that that system and its ministers 
had a special and divine sanction. 

It is true that there has been a strong re- 
action against these ideas ; but the reaction 
has often taken the form of setting up some 
other ministry and some other set of ordi- 
nances as having a similar sanction. "Old 



viii PREFACE 

Priest " has been " writ large/' not only in 
presbytery, but in many systems of ordinances. 
Wherever systems and ordinances are consid- 
ered to hold an absolute position and to be of 
primary importance, they become dangerous 
to the Christian life ; for then a false stand- 
ard is introduced: men judge themselves 
and one another, not simply by the standard 
of Christian righteousness, but, in part at 
least, by the forms which they profess and 
the modes of worship which they practice* 
They do not take Christ and his divine na- 
ture as their judge, but another standard, — 
that of their church system. And thus the 
church system, when it is not looked upon as 
plastic, and adaptable to the needs of the time 
and the promotion of Christian righteousness 
in the widest sense, becomes a real danger to 
both religious and social progress. It is ima- 
gined to have been imposed at some past time 
by authority, and men's thoughts about it 
turn to an unreal and impractical antiquari- 
anism. And since the genuine antiquity is 
obscure, and the New Testament gives no au- 



PREFACE ix 

thoritative pronouncement on church forms, 
" antiquity '^ is apt to mean medisevahsm, and 
especially the practices of the last two centu- 
ries before the Reformation. This, however, 
is but an extreme case of that which happens 
generally wherever church forms are regarded 
as having some absolute authority. An eccle- 
siastical conscience is a perverted conscience : 
it is sure to come into conflict at some point 
with straightforward morality. It is this, 
probably, more than anything else, which is 
accountable for the breach (so far as it exists) 
between rehgious observances and the general 
conscience. It is not too much to say that 
men often find more satisfaction for the real 
needs of their spirits in social circles, in secu- 
lar pursuits, in the club or the theatre, than 
in the place of worship. 

The idea of a church system of any kind 
having been imposed by authority appears to 
be giving way before historical investigation ; 
and there is, therefore, some danger that men 
may go by reaction to the opposite extreme, 
and may think that the whole apparatus of 



X PREFACE 

religious ordinances is valueless for moral and 
social purposes. And since they have been 
accustomed almost to identify religion with 
these ordinances, they may imagine that reli- 
gion itself is, as is sometimes said, " played 
out," and that we must turn away from reli- 
gion if we would insure moral and social pro- 
gress. This tendency is often observed in 
young people, who, at the university, or 
generally in opening life, are undergoing a 
reaction from the religious instruction and 
discipline of home or school. It is felt also 
in the diminution of candidates for ordina- 
tion, and in the number of those whom the 
French call ^^ pratiquants." It is almost a 
commonplace, in certain quarters, that we 
must have less of religion, and more of jus- 
tice and love. 

It has, therefore, seemed to me that it might 
be well for one who, during a long life and 
ministry, has worked upon the conviction that 
no one form or system is binding upon Chris- 
tian believers, and that, as St. Stephen and 
St. Paul taught, following Christ himself, all 



PREFACE xi 

ordinances are essentially secondary and mu- 
table, to show that ordinances have still a per- 
fectly valid ground, and that they may be 
made to serve powerfully the ends of social 
righteousness. It is admitted that Christian- 
ity, which is faith and righteousness, is in its 
essence independent of ordinances. Christ 
said but a few words about the Church and 
the sacraments; nothing at all about pub- 
lic worship. But, on the other hand, experi- 
ence shows that, human nature being what it 
is, both faith and righteousness are in a large 
measure dependent for their support upon 
worship and sacraments. While we admit, 
therefore, that these are not to be placed on 
the same level with moral and social goodness, 
but as subservient and mutable, it is of the 
utmost importance to show how they may be 
adapted to the needs of our time, and espe- 
cially to that social progress on which the 
mind of all the more advanced sections of the 
Christian Church is set. 

In attempting to show this, I have made no 
distinction between the various sections into 



xii PREFACE 

which Christians are divided. The question 
I have raised affects them all aHke, if not 
equally ; and I am not without hope that the 
consideration of it may tend to draw us all 
together, since all have the same needs. Our 
differences have arisen mainly from the idea 
that Christian ordinances have an absolute, 
not a relative position, and that consequently 
any deviation from the absolute standard, as 
we conceive and adopt it, must cause separa- 
tion. When we come to the behef that they 
are of secondary, not primary importance, 
and that their value consists mainly in their 
power to build up the Christian life of the 
community in faith and righteousness, we 
cannot but feel that the matters which divide 
us are far less than the great objects of the 
Christian life. And when we engage in the 
attempt to adapt our ordinances freely to 
the needs of a new time, this attempt, being 
common to us all, must draw out our sym- 
pathies towards one another ; for there is 
nothing so unifying as a common work. It 
is not so important that we should worship 



PREFACE xiil 

together as that we should feel and work 
together. Our forms may remain as diverse 
as before, and yet we may feel our object 
to be identical, and may interpret our ordi- 
nances — both to ourselves and to each other 
— in a sense congenial to our great and com- 
mon purpose of building up a righteous so- 
ciety. 

It may be well to summarize very shortly 
the teaching of these lectures. 

1. The Church is the body of faithful 
men banded together for the establishment of 
Christ's righteousness in the world, and freely 
organizing themselves in societies for that 
purpose. It is distinguished, on the one 
hand, from the Kingdom of God, which is 
the dominion of God and his righteousness 
generally in the development of mankind ; 
and, on the other hand, from the church sys- 
tem, the system of ordinances, which is the 
special subject of these lectures. 

2. The Bible is the history of the divine 
society growing up amongst men, and must 
be used in the system of church ordinances 



xlv PREFACE 

in such a way as to promote and strengthen 
Christian and social righteousness. 

3. The Sacraments are federal acts, in- 
tended to bind the members o£ the society- 
together in loving and just relations to God 
and to one another ; and they should be used 
so as to strengthen all these relations and 
hallow all the bonds by which men are united 
together in society, 

4. The Creeds, confessions, doctrinal forms, 
and other means by which expression is given 
to our common faith, are sjrmbols or rallying 
points to make us understand each other, and 
should be framed or accepted, changed or 
interpreted, with a view to the furtherance of 
a brotherhood of Christian righteousness. 

5. Our Public Worship and Preaching 
must have in them the element of universal- 
ity, and must be so conducted as to build up 
Christian relations, not in the congregation 
only, but also in the general community. 

6. The Pastorate should not be that of 
the individual minister alone. He should be 
the leader in a pastoral energy pervading the 



PREFACE XV 

community. The pastorate should be under- 
stood to inckide : first, all members of the 
worshiping body, who are not to be passive, 
but active workers; secondly, all who have 
the care of the young, the ignorant, and the 
poor ; thirdly, all who, as rulers or men of 
influence, are, in the Biblical sense, shepherds 
of the people. 

I cannot conclude this Preface without a 
word of thanks to those who honored me 
with the invitation to give these lectures, and 
for the kind hospitality with which they wel- 
comed me in my short visit to America. 
They have given me the assurance that a pre- 
vious work of mine, on " The World as the 
Subject of Eedemption," into which the 
thought and experience of a life were concen- 
trated, but which has had Kttle effect in Eng- 
land, has been a help to many in America, 
who in their turn are teachers of others ; and 
the hope that it may not be without influence 
in the life of the greatest Christian commu- 
nity the world has yet seen. May the great 



xvi PREFACE 

commonwealth become more and more con- 
scious of its mission to the world, and capable 
of doing, with ever clearer purpose, the work 
of a Christian Church in furtherance of the 
Kingdom of God. 



CONTENTS 

PAGE 

I. The Church System 1 

II. The Bible 43 

III. The Sacraments 89 

IV. Creeds and Confessions of Faith . . 137 
V. Common Prayer and Preaching . . . 185 

VI. Pastoral Work 229 



CHRISTIAN ORDINANCES AND 
SOCIAL PROGRESS 



THE CHURCH SYSTEM 

One of the greatest changes which Chris- 
tianity has been undergoing in the century 
which is now closing in is the perception that 
it is concerned not merely with individual 
souls, but with the general and especially the 
social welfare of mankind. This change is 
coincident with the greater interest in social 
questions which has grown up in the political 
sphere ; indeed, the phenomena are identical, 
for we cannot separate the church from the 
general progress of the race. The statesman 
sees that he can no longer deal with the 
people, after the fashion of the old political 
economy, as a number of separate individuals,, 
each of them fully capable of managing his 
whole life in all its range and relations, but 



2 THE CHURCH SYSTEM 

that he has to be something of a philanthro- 
pist, dealing with the masses as needing aid, 
refusing to allow great aggregates of popula- 
tion to spring up without security for sanita- 
tion, for decent dwellings, for immunity from 
fire, for education, and perhaps some provi- 
sion for the higher intellectual and moral 
culture, for recreation, and even for amuse- 
ment; and how far this aid towards social well- 
being may come under the domain of public 
law is a question to be determined by future 
experience. The religionist approaches the 
same class of questions from a different side. 
We have been accustomed, especially as par- 
takers of the Protestant and evangelical move- 
ment, to think almost wholly of the indi- 
vidual, his redemption from spiritual death, 
his personal training in holiness ; and of the 
Christian society, by whatever name we call 
it, or whatever scope we assign to it, as 
mainly of value as giving expansion to indi- 
vidual piety by means of fellowship and in- 
struction ; as a temporary scaffolding which 
will pass away, leaving the perfected indi- 
vidual as alone the ultimate result. But the 
wave of Christian opinion which has passed 
over the whole community of the English- 



THE CHURCH SYSTEM 3 

speaking race, and of which the so-called 
Oxford movement was only one conspicuous 
and one-sided embodiment, has led us to 
realize that the body of believers has its 
rights ; that the individual cannot be per- 
fected alone ; that the redemption of Christ is 
applicable to developed societies as well as to 
individual souls ; and that, as Plato said that 
righteousness was to be best studied when 
written in large letters on the structure of 
the commonwealth, so Christian principle is to 
be found in its fullness in the organized life 
of the Christian community. This principle, 
which is recognized fully in the later epistles 
of St. Paul, may be taken as now admitted. 
But the extension to be given to it has not 
been made clear ; and it will be one of the 
main objects of the present course of lectures 
to elucidate it. We all admit that we are 
bound to look beyond the immediate circle of 
those with whom we are united in Christian 
worship ; that the principles of religion must 
be applied to the whole range of social life. 
We all pray for our rulers and the welfare of 
the nation to which we belong, and for public 
righteousness, for the mutual well-being of 
all classes and orders in the community, and 



4 THE CHURCH SYSTEM 

especially for the welfare of the poor. But 
we have been somewhat slow to confess that 
all these objects, in their full extent, belong 
to the domain of Christianity ; and, by con- 
fining the word '^ church " to the society of 
Christians only so far as they are engaged 
in acts of common worship and the limited 
range of beneficence which a body of worship- 
ers can reach, we have been in danger of 
cutting off the general life of mankind, even 
in a Christian country, from the blessed influ- 
ences which our worship is meant to foster. 
It is the object of the present lectures to 
point out the bearing of the Christian institu- 
tions connected with our worshiping bodies 
on the life and progress of the whole society 
around us. 

There are three terms, the meaning of 
which it may be well to make clear before 
we enter into the subject more particularly. 
These are (1) The Kingdom of God; (2) The 
Church; (3) The Church-system of Ordi- 
nances. 



The kingdom of God is the dominion of 
God, — that is, of God as we know Him in 



THE CHURCH SYSTEM 5 

Christ — over the hearts and lives of men. 
Since God is love, and since his manifesta- 
tion is preeminently in the Cross of Christ, 
this implies the dominion of self-sacrificing 
love. Wherever God as revealed in Christ, 
and the divine principle of love, which is the 
name or nature of God, is acknowledged as su- 
preme in men's conscience and conduct, there 
is the kingdom of God. It is to be seen in 
the individual heart and mind. The king- 
dom of God is within you. But it is to be 
seen also in the progress of the divine princi- 
ple in the world, which grows like the mus- 
tard seed, or like the " corn of wheat," often 
unnoticed " while men sleep and rise night and 
day ; " and the assurance, of which the resur- 
rection of Christ, his ascension and his session 
at the right hand of God, are the typical 
representation, is that this process will go on 
till everything is subject to Him. He must 
reign till He hath put all enemies under his 
feet. He must put down all rule and author- 
ity and power, that is, all that is contrariant 
to Him. Thrones, dominions, powers, are all 
created by Him, — they claim in their true 
essence to represent the perfect righteousness, 
of which He is the full embodiment, and 



6 THE CHURCH SYSTEM 

therefore they emanate from Him, the Lord 
of righteousness and love, — and by Him all 
things consist or stand fast ; for righteousness 
is the only bond of society. And the purpose 
of God disclosed by St. Paul is that God will 
gather together all things in Christ in the 
fullness of time. This is the true apocalyp- 
tic vision, as practical as it is true, which is 
found in the Book of Daniel and in the vis- 
ion of John at Patmos, the real '' fifth mon- 
archy," as sane and free from fanaticism as 
was the Christ Himself. 

For what is imported by these apocalyptic 
symbols ? Simply the progress, the discovery, 
the practice, of true relations among men ; and 
this I take to be the goal of all progress. The 
human side of God's nature is love ; where 
righteousness and love reign among men, 
there is the kingdom of God. This king- 
dom is in its essence as wide as the human 
race : that is, it claims to rule over all men 
and all systems of life. And the various 
religious and political systems which have 
existed or exist now among men are in some 
sense attempts to realize it. We cannot 
speak of any of them, now that they have 
been so fully brought to light, as if they were 



THE CHURCH SYSTEM 7 

merely evil. The 8at/toVta, which we are apt 
to translate as '' devils/' are really spirits of 
various degrees of good or evil ; and it was a 
part of the great service rendered by Origen 
in the third century to have brought this out. 
There are^ no doubt, the unclean or violent 
spirits which we read of in the Gospels, which 
need to be cast out: but there are spirits, 
which are of a higher kind, which can be 
and shall be made servants of Christ. No one 
could think of the Pythian Apollo, the lord 
of light and intellect, as wholly bad: only 
when Paul met with the devotee of this 
SaLfjLovLov, debased as it was to a mean and 
money-getting soothsaying, and confronted 
it with the pure truth and holiness of Christ, 
the light that had been in it became darkness, 
like the lurid flame of a torch in the dayUght, 
and it had to be cast out. 

Has, then, the kingdom of God, which both 
Christ and his forerunner preached, into 
which they called men to enter, which they 
urged their followers to proclaim, which was 
to be the object of Christian endeavors 
(" Seek first the kingdom of God and his 
righteousness ''), no outward form of existence 
among men? Is it no real society, but a 



8 THE CHURCH SYSTEM 

kind of metaphor, in the sense in which we 
speak of the animal or vegetable kingdom^ 
or in which we say that a man is under the 
dominion of some fixed idea ? To maintain 
this would be a contradiction to the laws of 
the human spirit ; for its nature is to work 
from within outwardly : the idea must have 
its realization. The sense of social righteous- 
ness and love must incessantly strive to em- 
body itself in institutions, in laws, in arrange- 
ments, in organized societies. When Christ 
said that his kingdom was not of this world. 
He did not mean that it was not to have any 
realization on the surface of this globe, but 
that its spirit was not a worldly spirit : it was 
not compacted by fraud or violence. Nor 
again did He imply that force should never 
be used, for force and violence are not the 
same. Every society, of whatever kind, must 
enforce its rules, and enforcement means, ulti- 
mately, an appeal to force ; and justice, how- 
ever patient, must, even for the sake of pro- 
tection to the weak, and for the maintenance 
of the life of society, in the last resort flame 
forth and strike home. But the progress of 
the Christian principle among men can be 
traced by the constant diminution of the use 



THE CHURCH SYSTEM 9 

of force, and the increased reliance on per- 
suasion. This is the very root of democracy 
and pohtical freedom — what Thucydides 
called the trustful spirit of liberty. And the 
ideal at which we aim is a state in which the 
moral sanctions will be sufficient, and the use 
of force will cease entirely. 

Meanwhile, every society of men must aim 
at this state, however feebly. There is no 
true social principle but that of justice and 
love. From the days of Thrasymachus, the 
interlocutor of Socrates in Plato's Eepublic, 
to those of Nietzsche or of IngersoU, the idea 
that will and force can be the basis of society 
has only to show itself in order to be re- 
proved. 

The kingdom of God, then, is the reign of 
God over men, which is ever coming more 
and more, being increasingly realized in hu- 
man society. 

II 

What, then, is the Church ? It is the soci- 
ety in which the name of Christ is confessed 
as supreme over the whole organism. It 
cannot be identified with the kingdom, be- 
cause the empire of the divine Spirit, though 



10 THE CHURCH SYSTEM 

constantly striving to realize itself, and gain- 
ing its realization in a greater or less degree, 
is not bound up with any organization, and 
is often to be seen in men and communities 
to which Christ as manifested in the flesh has 
not been made known. The Word is the 
light of every man, and whenever it is recog- 
nized and its power admitted to rule, there is 
the kingdom of God. But where Christ is 
known and acknowledged as supreme in the 
common life, there is the Church. 

I know that it has been the custom to con- 
fine the word church to a company of persons 
bound together mainly for purposes of com- 
mon worship ; and it may seem an impracti- 
cable piece of purism to refuse to use the 
common terminology ; as if any one should 
decline to speak of charity and charitable 
institutions because we know that charity or 
love means much more than kind ofi&ces for 
the poor, or as if a man should refuse in 
America to apply the word democracy to a 
particular political party because it has in 
other countries a wider significance. But the 
case is not similar, for no one here would 
deny the wider sense of the political term ; 
whereas the use made of the word church 



THE CHURCH SYSTEM 11 

implies not merely that the society organized 
for worship is a home of God's Spirit, but 
that it is the only home of it ; that it is the 
specially chosen form (established by Christ 
Himself, as is often maintained) in which God 
has willed that those who are faithful to Him 
should be bound together, and that all other 
forms of social life a?e forever to be looked 
upon as profane ground outside the sanctuary. 
This view of things appears to me funda- 
mentally unchristian, unhistorical, and calcu- 
lated to subvert the purpose of God as stated 
above, and ultimately to sterilize the worship 
itself for social purposes. 

It is unchristian, for it is of the essence of 
heathenism to make this distinction of the 
sacred and profane. " Procul, procul, este 
profani " and '' Odi profanum vulgus et 
arceo " are sayings wholly abhorrent to the 
spirit of Christ. No doubt in the Old Testa- 
ment dispensation — that is, in the ceremonial 
part — we have the idea of holiness as that of 
outward separation. Place, day, nation, land, 
persons, are marked off as holy. But this 
was but for a time — a shadow of things to 
come. In Christ there is no such distinction. 
He is the Saviour of all men, Jew or Gentile. 



12 THE CHURCH SYSTEM 

His moral teaching is absolutely universal. 
From the time of his appearance among men, 
the world itself is holy. In our weakness we 
may feel it necessary to consecrate special 
days or places or persons ; but we know that 
this is done either as a mere distinction of 
service, or else as giving a type which all 
others are to follow (let Sunday serve as an 
illustration for both these distinctions). The 
moment we begin to say, " This is holy and 
the rest unholy/' we stand on the ground of 
heathenism or Judaism, not of Christianity. 
And why should the case be different with 
societies of men ? Would any one dare to 
say that the society of worshipers is Christ's, 
and is holy, but the society of legislators or 
of medical men was not Christ's, and unholy ? 
It is supposed that the function of public 
worship is specially Christian in contrast with 
all other forms of social union. Are we to 
follow Christ? or tradition? It is certain 
that our Lord said nothing to encourage his 
disciples to hold assemblies of public wor- 
ship. Not a word in the Gospels can be 
quoted to that effect. He made use of the 
synagogue worship to proclaim the king- 
dom : and we may certainly infer from this 



THE CHURCH SYSTEM 13 

that He in no sense disapproved of it, and 
that it may profitably be used for Christian 
purposes, as may every other part of human 
life. But from this to the idea that it may 
be isolated from the rest as specially Chris- 
tian, or made the special mark of a man's 
Christianity, is a very long step, and one 
which has proved most disastrous. It is not 
too much to say that it would be possible for 
a Christian society to exist in which there was 
no public worship. Eichard Eothe, whose 
work on theological ethics has reigned for 
fifty years in Germany with almost undisputed 
supremacy, believed that this was the proper 
tendency of religious life ; that is, that in- 
stead of going to church Christians would 
realize that they are the Church, and that 
they would not have to come together to say 
to each other, '' Know the Lord," because they 
would feel God everywhere present. Is not 
this, indeed, the ideal of the Apocalypse — 
no Temple, but a God-inhabited society ? 

I say further, the conception which makes 
public worship and ordinances the exclusive 
or special function of the Church is unhistori- 
cal. We must take the words of the New 
Testament according to their use in the Old. 



14 THE CHURCH SYSTEM 

The word ecclesia^ which we translate church, 
was the word which in the Old Testament 
was used as an equivalent for "the whole 
congregation of Israel ; '' that is, not, as has 
sometimes been supposed, a number of people 
called out from their natural occupations 
(which are God's ordinance and service) and 
assembled together for public worship, but 
the whole body of the people called out from 
their homes to do the business of the nation. 
It is a word of Greek origin, and had this 
signification in the Greek cities. As used 
in the Septuagint Version of the Old Testa- 
ment, which was in the hands of St. Paul 
if not of Christ Himself, it was practically 
synonymous with the word synagogue, which 
means a gathering of men together, and, in 
the local communities, was as far as was pos- 
sible the governing power of a fraction of 
the nation. And in these senses our Lord 
used it in the only two passages in which he 
speaks of an ecclesia. In one of these he bids 
his followers take every means for the private 
settlement of a quarrel ; but if this does not 
succeed, the aggrieved party is to tell it to 
the ecclesia, that is, the local parish board 
who governed the assembly with the ruler 



THE CHURCH SYSTEM 15 

of the synagogue at its head. All we can 
infer from this (and it is inference, not direct 
command) is that, in Christian times, believers 
should endeavor not to be judges in their 
own cause, but to get other faithful men to 
arbitrate between them, or, in the last resort, 
to get the whole public body of Christians, 
or their representatives who are appointed 
as judges, to determine the dispute. In 
the other place he says : " Upon this rock 
(whether the rock of faith, or Peter, as the 
faithful man) I will build my ecclesia." But, 
as Hort says, we must beware of bringing 
into our interpretation the developments or 
associations of later times. There were many 
such ecclesias or synagogues at that time, 
representing particular sets of persons, as we 
read in the Acts of the synagogues of the 
Cyrenians or of the Libertini ; and each of 
them attempted, so far as circumstances al- 
lowed, to enforce the law of Moses, and to 
train their members in the national discipline. 
Our Lord, then, using a word which was 
perfectly familiar to those who heard Him, 
says that the ecclesia which He will form will 
be grounded upon faith in Him like that of 
Peter; that is to be its principle. It is to 



16 THE CHURCH SYSTEM 

enforce the law and discipline (for He did not 
come to destroy but to fulfill), only that it will 
be a spiritualized law, a spiritualized disci- 
pline ; faith will interpret it, as Christ Him- 
self interpreted the law in the Sermon on the 
Mount. Now, it may be admitted freely 
that, for want of sovereign power, the Jewish 
ecclesia could not go far beyond excommuni- 
cation or putting men out of the synagogue 
and the forty stripes save one, which were all 
in operation in the time of our Lord and St. 
Paul, in the enforcement of the law ; and 
that, being hemmed in more and more on this 
side, it naturally developed more largely in 
the direction of instruction and prayer ; yet 
we must remember that in the Old Testament, 
which was read continually (Moses of old 
time hath in every city them that preach him, 
being read in the synagogue every Sabbath 
day), no sanction was given to separate assem- 
blies for worship : life and its conduct were 
the theme of the law. And thus, in the view 
of our Lord when He spoke of building his 
ecclesia, the thought, and the meaning of his 
words to his auditors, would be not exclusively 
or even primarily an assembly of persons 
praying and exhorting, but a fraction of the 



THE CHURCH SYSTEM 17 

nation which acknowledged God, who were 
seeking to regulate their lives according to 
his will. 

It is unnecessary to trace this out histori- 
cally, which, indeed, I have done elsewhere,^ 
showing how the Church was cooped up dur- 
ing the era of persecution and unable to lay 
hold fully on human life ; and that, when 
the time of freedom came, the limited view 
had become so habitual that the best minds 
were occupied almost wholly with matters 
relating to worship and doctrine ; how then 
the monastic system drew men away from the 
proper calling of the Church, namely, the win- 
ning of the world to Christian righteousness, 
and the supremacy of the clergy in the Mid- 
dle Ages again tended to give ritual and or- 
dinance an undue place ; and how, even after 
the Reformation, the Church turned to contro- 
versies on similar subjects : yet how, on the 
other hand, the high aim of claiming the world 
for Christ was never completely lost sight of, 
whether in the covenant by which Theodosius 
and Gratian accepted the supremacy of Christ 
over the Empire, of which Professor Allen has 

1 The World as the Subject of Redemption (Longmans). 
Lectures iv. to vi. 



18 THE CHURCH SYSTEM 

said, '' This was the social compact by which 
. . . the Empire became Christian, or was 
only another name for the Catholic Church ; " 
or in the attempt of Hildebrand and his suc- 
cessors to make the clerical power as repre- 
senting Christ supreme over all spheres and 
persons; or in the system of the Church of 
England, which recognizes no distinction of 
church and state, but consecrates the sover- 
eign and all the public powers to be ministers 
of God as fully as the clergy ; or in the at- 
tempts made at Geneva, or in the Puritan 
communities of New England, to bring the 
whole range of human life under the rule of 
Christ. 

This does not imply necessarily that mat- 
ters of public worship should be under the 
control of the nation as they are in England. 
In a country hke the United States, even if 
men should be persuaded that Christ's Church, 
the body which represents Him on earth, is 
more truly to be found in the whole Christian 
nation than in the worshiping bodies, it is 
quite possible that the business of public wor- 
ship should be left as it is now to the manage- 
ment of the various worshiping communities ; 
they would be in that case private associa- 



THE CHURCH SYSTEM 19 

tions, like those which carry on the press or 
the higher education, or, Hke the family life, 
working within the larger church-body of the 
nation, and fulfilling independently one of its 
chief functions. 

But the great question on which we are 
bound to be clear is one which is seldom 
touched upon, namely, this : What is the ob- 
ject for which the Church exists? The as- 
sumption that it exists primarily for public 
worship with some adjuncts of beneficence is 
usually accepted without question, and I have 
given reasons why it should be rejected. 
The thesis which I would maintain in con- 
trast to it is this : that the Church is a com- 
pany of men banded together to establish 
Christ's righteousness in the world. This is 
the Church of the prophets, who bent all their 
powers to establish righteousness, and looked 
upon the ordinances of worship as only of use 
as bearing upon this. Their object was also 
that of our Lord, who never spoke of ordi- 
nances of worship, — even the sacraments, 
as we shall see, being rather ordinances of 
life than of worship, — but was Himself the 
Eighteous One, whose whole life was spent in 
the cause of righteousness. This object is 



20 THE CHURCH SYSTEM 

all-comprehensive, and therefore the society 
which is grounded upon it, which has for its 
object to hve out a complete hfe of Christian 
righteousness in its largest range, is alone 
worthy to be called " the body of Christ, the 
fullness of him who filleth all in all/' No 
society but one which is thus complete can 
secure, in all their range, our true relations 
with God and with one another, or realize the 
promise that God, who is righteousness and 
love, shall dwell in his people. 

Now, it may be said that this righteous- 
ness is the aim of all the worshiping bodies, 
that they all seek to train their members in 
righteousness. But this is the case only to a 
limited extent. They represent one function 
and set it before men as the whole. The 
balance is upset, the truth denaturalized. 
First, the habit of fixing the mind constantly 
upon religious ordinances makes us judge by 
a wrong standard. We judge life by ordi- 
nances or doctrines, instead of judging ordi- 
nances and doctrines by life. Next, we do 
not get the advice of the whole community 
but of a part, whereas the whole body of 
God's children is that in which alone the 
Eternal can dwell. Thirdly, we are con- 



THE CHURCH SYSTEM 21 

stantly (though now less than formerly) di- 
vided from one another on unreal grounds ; 
so that the worshiping Church presents no 
united fronts and it has often been a hin- 
drance, through its disputes and its narrow- 
ness, to the progress of good. It is very 
difficult for the earnest members of the wor- 
shiping bodies to rid themselves of the 
special tenets and special interests of their 
own body in judging of social questions ; and 
consequently their action, which ought to 
command confidence as the representation of 
God's will (for the Church is the pillar and 
ground of the truth) constantly creates mis- 
trust. 

But there is more than this. The body 
which claims to represent the kingdom of 
God must do it not in word, but in deed. 
Preaching and prayer are good for those who 
can attend upon them. But they will never 
by themselves convince the world. It is 
action and example, a full life fully hved out, 
that has power over mankind. And a body 
restricted to a particular class of actions can 
never give the scope needed for the Spirit of 
God. It cultivates unduly one side of human 
nature, and leaves the rest almost untouched. 



22 THE CHURCH SYSTEM 

The pursuit of science, art, politics, medicine, 
commerce, literature, are all parts of the hu- 
manity which Christ has redeemed : and the 
natural endowments by which these are culti- 
vated become, through Christian faith, xapio"- 
fiara, gifts of the Spirit. To insist that they 
must always remain outside the sphere of 
church life is to do despite to the Spirit of 
God, to deprive the holders of them of half 
their force. Yet, if their spiritual capacity is 
acknowledged, how can we reckon them as 
anything less than ministers of God and of 
his Church ? 

The doctrine of the Universal Priesthood of 
believers is held with the lips and the pen, but 
denied at every turn in practice. In the 
sphere of public worship, which is claimed 
exclusively as the Church, it can never have 
full scope ; for in that sphere the minister of 
the Word and sacraments must necessarily be 
supreme. Even in what laymen might be 
able to do in that sphere, they are constantly 
thwarted, sometimes by the mistrust of the 
leader, sometimes through the technical and 
unreal modes of speech and action which per- 
vade the atmosphere of an exclusive body. 
But what is wanted most is the frank recog- 



THE CHURCH SYSTEM 23 

nition of the secular employments as a spir- 
itual service. It is a noble prayer which is 
offered on Good Friday in the Protestant 
Episcopal Church, that every member of the 
Church in his vocation and ministry may 
truly and godly serve the Lord. The Church 
which that collect speaks of cannot be one 
which is organized, wholly or mainly, for pub- 
he worship. 

In taking this larger view of the Church 
we are perhaps haunted by the idea that 
others than those who are strictly Christians 
would belong to it. But we have learnt in 
these later years to dwell on the universal 
fatherhood of God and the universal brother- 
hood of man. And the confession of these 
is of primary importance for the social work 
of the Church. No doubt, in any system, 
notorious evil Hvers and notorious blasphemers 
would be incapable of doing the work of the 
Church ; but these will always be kept away, 
without definite rules, by the laws of a Chris- 
tian country which undertakes a large part of 
the discipline once exerted through excommu- 
nication, by their own lack of interest in the 
subject, and by the sound pubhc opinion of the 
community. It is, meanwhile, of great im- 



24 THE CHURCH SYSTEM 

portance to keep the door open for the return 
of the prodigal. If the Church is the limited 
body which is defined by ordinances of wor- 
ship, then all kinds of exclusion may seem 
justified, and the present state of narrowness 
and disunion may be perpetuated. But if it 
be, as has been here maintained, a compre- 
hensive community engaged in the practical 
establishment of Christian righteousness, then 
we may justly take in all who are willing to 
cooperate in the great task, as St. Paul did at 
Corinth, where he did not exclude even those 
who denied the resurrection. There is many 
a man who seems to himself and to others an 
unbeliever, who yet is full of the Christian 
spirit, and by whose exclusion the Church 
would be the poorer. It has seemed hitherto 
as if the sole danger were the admission of 
unfit members. But the danger in our day is 
much greater that we should exclude, either 
on theological or ecclesiastical grounds, those 
who are dear to God. The Church is a vast 
company which St. Paul likens to a great 
house, containing not only vessels of gold and 
silver, but of wood and brass, and some to 
honor and some to dishonor. There the im- 
perfect may be trained, the babes in Christ 



THE CHURCH SYSTEM 25 

may be educated, the erring reformed, the 
prodigal be accounted as still a son and won 
back to the Father's open arms. 

Let us beheve that wherever two or three 
are gathered together in Christ's name, not 
for worship only but for secular service, He is 
there, and there is his Church ; and let it stand 
for our conclusion that Christ's Church is sim- 
ply human society transformed by the Spirit 
of God. 

Ill 

The Church system is the third term to 
which we have to assign a clear meaning. 

I mean by it the system of ordinances 
which has grown up within the Christian 
Church, by which the members realize their 
incorporation, and make known their wants 
as a society before God, and unite in acts of 
adoration, thanksgiving, and praise, and for- 
tify themselves by the reiteration of their 
faith, by fellowship with one another, and by 
words of exhortation and of spiritual counsel, 
I think this is rightly called the Church Sys- 
tem, because it is that by which the society 
becomes most clearly conscious of itseK and 
manifests itself to the world. I need not 



26 THE CHURCH SYSTEM 

dwell upon the existence of this system : it is 
known to us all; its buildings stand high 
above almost all others in Christian countries ; 
it is often spoken of, though mistakenly as I 
think, as if it were itself the Church, and its 
ministers as if they were the only ministers 
of God and of Christ. Nor do I purpose to 
enter into any detail of the different modes 
by which this Church system expresses itself : 
that would lead us into the region of old con- 
troversies, " ignes suppositos cineri doloso ; " 
and even though we might discuss them 
calmly as things which have lost their virus 
for us, yet, if the mind is directed constantly 
upon them, they grow with surprising rapidity 
into a position of undue preeminence, and are 
apt to obscure that truth and life to which 
they are meant to minister. It will be my 
object in the remainder of this lecture to esti- 
mate the general bearing of this system upon 
the life of the Church as a society, taking 
the Church in the larger sense which I have 
sought to vindicate for it. This is a task 
which has never, I think, been adequately 
attempted. 

It is necessary, in the first place, to reiter- 
ate that the Founder of Christianity, who is, 



THE CHURCH SYSTEM 27 

as has been rightly said, not its Founder 
merely but its essence, its very substance, 
gave no single precept or encouragement re- 
lating to this system; for I have already 
pointed out (and shall dwell on it later on) 
that the sacraments were federal or social acts 
rather than ordinances of worship. Neither 
did He give any discouragement to it : and 
the fact that the ecclesia or synagogue had 
come in his day to be largely, though not 
solely, concerned with public worship may be 
taken as a justification for its existence in 
the ecclesia which He founded. But not for 
its supremacy ; for his ecclesia was to be 
grounded on faith, which is in sharp contrast 
to every system which makes ordinances 
supreme. The synagogue itself represented 
primarily the supremacy of the law of right- 
eousness over that of sacrifices. Post-exiHc 
Judaism, it has been said, was not Levitical 
but Eabbinical, a teaching, however, which, 
as we know, had degenerated into a formal 
moralism and ceremonialism, against which 
the spirit of faith rebels. But, further, the 
faith in Christ, on which the ecclesia was to 
be built, was faith in One who, by his own 
life and teaching, showed that personal piety, 



28 THE CHURCH SYSTEM 

truth, justice, love, and the acts flowing from 
them, were alone of importance, and that 
public functions of rehgion, if they existed, 
must be strictly directed toward the promotion 
of righteousness. " Faith," moreover, stands 
for all that is real or vital in religion and life, 
in contrast with ordinances or system of every 
kind. It is manifest, therefore, that the sys- 
tem of ordinances, or, as we might say in the 
present day, church-going or public worship, 
was not of the essence of the Christian eccle- 
sia. Still less could it be, as it has since been 
commonly held to be, its chief or paramount 
object. 

An attempt has sometimes been made to 
trace the prayers and liturgies in common use 
back to the time of the Apostles, and even 
beyond. It is thought that, when it is said 
of the first church immediately after Pente- 
cost that its members " continued in the 
Apostles' teaching and fellowship and in 
breaking of bread and in the prayers," these 
prayers were those commonly in use in the 
synagogue and in the Temple. This interest- 
ing idea may be well founded, and it is help- 
ful to us to think of the evidence it affords of 
the continuity of Judaic and Christian worship. 



THE CHURCH SYSTEM 29 

But it would be wrong to draw from this 
the inference that these prayers constituted an 
authoritative rule of Christian devotion. The 
statement just quoted shows^ indeed, that 
from the first the members of the Church had 
their assembhes for worship, unless we inter- 
pret it as meaning that they continued to 
attend the daily prayers of the Temple, But 
the evidence of Apostolic times, especially of 
the Epistles of St. Paul, is quite clear to the 
effect that there was no authoritative rule ; 
that it was enough that all should be done 
decently and in order. And in all the Pro- 
testant churches it has been strenuously main- 
tained that each body of Christians has the 
right to regulate its own forms of worship. 
The attempt made in the Anglican Commun- 
ion of late years to give a kind of divine 
sanction to the forms of the mediaeval Church 
is in direct contradiction to the Thirty-fourth 
of their own Articles of Religion, which as- 
serts that every particular or national Church 
has authority to regulate such things, and 
that it is not necessary that these forms 
should be in all cases the same and utterly 
alike, for that in all times they have been 
diverse. The system of Ordinances, which is 



30 THE CHURCH SYSTEM 

the subject of these lectures, is of secondary, 
not primary importance : and is essentially 
variable according to the needs of the Chris- 
tian life. 

How, then, we ask, will this system of 
Christian Ordinances best minister to the social 
life, the special importance of which has been 
touched upon in the beginning of this lec- 
ture? 

1. By realizing that it itself constitutes a 
society ; by laying the chief stress on the 
social or corporate side of what is commonly 
called church life. We are still haunted too 
much with the idea that the spiritual is only 
the individual. But this idea is grounded 
on a false philosophy, that on which the old 
political economy was grounded, which was 
purely rational, and supposed that each man 
had full consciousness of himself and his con- 
ditions, and was capable of steering his own 
way unaided. I propose to dwell upon this 
more fully in the third of these lectures, but 
I must touch shortly upon it here. Human 
life is really made up of two chief elements, 
the conscious, rational, or voluntary, which 
chooses and acts in full light and independ- 
ence ; and, on the other hand, the instinctive, 



THE CHURCH SYSTEM 31 

the habitual, the social, in which both thought 
and act are swayed by other than personal 
influences. Some o£ these influences come, 
no doubt, from physical causes, such as cli- 
mate or geographical position. But the chief 
part of them are social. The moral atmos- 
phere in which we are nurtured, the education 
we have received, the pohtical institutions 
under which we live, the habits which these 
engender, and the currents of thought and 
feeling to which we all are subjected, — these 
form an essential and powerful element in 
our lives. These are the tendencies, the 
moral forces, the social powers, of which we 
commonly, if vaguely, speak. They corre- 
spond to, if they are not to be identified 
with, the thrones, principalities, dominions, and 
powers, which were personified in the Gnos- 
ticizing systems of early Christian days, and 
of which St. Paul says that they are all to be 
made subject to Christ. Among these angelic 
powers, of brighter or darker hue, the influ- 
ence of the Church of Christ stands preemi- 
nent : and when St. Paul says that " to the 
principalities and powers in heavenly places is 
to be made known by the Church the mani- 
fold wisdom of God,'' we cannot be wrong in 



32 THE CHURCH SYSTEM 

construing, or at least applying his words to 
the work of bringing all the social forces into 
the hght of which the Church is the earthly 
focus. The system of Christian ordinances 
endeavors to set forth that light ; and it must 
do it, not merely by speaking of it, or by 
giving sacramental signs of it, but by reaUzing 
it in the loving fellowship of its members. 
In this fellowship let the influences be formed 
which act so powerfully on young minds, and 
form in them a kind of presupposition for 
their whole lives, lasting, often without verifi- 
cation or criticism, far into manhood. Plato 
spoke of a TrpOtrov xj/cvSo^y an original He which 
lay imbedded in the tissue of the mind, an 
idea far removed from that of original sin. 
Let us take care that we impress, not by word 
merely, but by the conduct of our communi- 
ties, a Trpiirrj aXrjO^La^ an Original presumption 
of truth, so that those young or simple ones, 
who are being trained by our ordinances, 
should see, realize, feel as a circumambient 
air which they breathe, the great principles 
of God's fatherhood, of man's brotherhood, of 
the compassion which flows from the sense of 
God's forgiveness, of the unselfish love which 
flows from the cross of Christ, of the idea of 



THE CHURCH SYSTEM 33 

service which flows from his life. This will 
be the true baptismal regeneration^ the sub- 
stitution in all that we do of the undercur- 
rent of love for the promptings of selfishness. 
And let us make men realize that we go to 
church not for ourselves, but for the good of 
the community : we can edify ourselves alone 
at home ; we come to church and to commun- 
ion to realize social Christianity. And the 
consummation for which we look embraces 
the social life as well as the individual. If 
there is joy over one sinner that repenteth, 
there is joy also when the redeemed souls are 
united in loving fellowship, when the wor- 
shiping body realizes in its measure the new 
Jerusalem coming forth from heaven as a 
bride adorned for her husband. 

2. But while the company of worshipers 
may reahze in their own circle something of 
the Christianized social life, they are bound 
to look beyond themselves to the greater soci- 
ety, the fuller Church around them. If no 
man lives to himself, no society can do it. It 
was the ruin of Israel that it was content 
with its own good customs, and would not care 
for those beyond. Thus, we may say, in 
Tennyson's words, and take warning from it 



34 THE CHURCH SYSTEM 

for ourselves, " One good custom did corrupt 
the world." We live in an age in which 
great social problems have arisen, never 
thought of by our forefathers. The indus- 
trial revolution which has made our great 
cities, the spread of education, the emanci- 
pation of women, the greater freedom of 
thought — each of these, and all of them act- 
ing upon one another, have caused new needs 
in the social sphere. The housing and gen- 
eral well-being of the poor, the education 
question, the relations of workmen and capi- 
talists, the temperance question, the popula- 
tion question (most important of all), the 
marriage question, the question of coloniza- 
tion, of commerce, and of empire — all these 
demand the thought and energy which once 
were confined to a far narrower circle. It is 
true that in many of these men do not see 
their way, and the first labor needed is that 
of thought. What the worshiping body can 
do is to keep constantly before its members 
the importance and the greatness of social 
service. There, as much as in worship or 
meditation, lies the service of God. 

3. But it is not so much the actual solu- 
tion of these questions with which the wor- 



THE CHURCH SYSTEM 35 

shiping body is concerned : it is much more 
with the spirit in which they are approached. 
In almost all o£ them it is the right disposi- 
tion which is needed. Take, for instance, the 
relation of employers and employed. If 
kindness, and mutual respect, and trustful- 
ness, and the honorable feeling of fellow ser- 
vice were present, how easily, for the most 
part, the difficulty would be settled. And it 
is just these feelings, as resulting from a faith 
which unites us to Him who is the centre and 
the light of humanity, which it is the func- 
tion of these Christian ordinances to foster. 
It may be that this can best be done indi- 
rectly ; but at least by way of illustration or 
application it should be done. A system of 
ordinances which does not show itself con- 
scious of the world around it is apt to move 
in the air, gHding pleasantly along, but with- 
out keeping touch with the ground : that 
means, too often, that it is a sort of aristo- 
cratic castle, in which a life of the more courtly 
virtues may be lived out without sympathy 
for the woes and ignorance and struggles of 
the serfs and villeins that cluster round it. 

4. But it must do much more than allude 
to them in general. The time has come in 



36 THE CHURCH SYSTEM 

which social service must be esteemed amongst 
the highest parts of church work. And it is 
not enough that there should be sympathy 
between the so-called churchman and the 
philanthropist. Those who give themselves 
to social work, in whatever department, paid 
or unpaid, should be encouraged to feel that 
they are engaged in a holy and Christian 
work. It was well said by an English states- 
man who was reproached with holding a 
meeting on municipal affairs in Holy Week 
that he considered that much of the work 
which the municipality had to do was pre- 
eminently a holy work, since it had so close a 
bearing on the moral and social welfare of 
the community. I cannot but think that, so 
long as the worshiping body continues to 
maintain that it alone is the Church and the 
body of Christ, and that all other organiza- 
tions are something else, the impression must 
be, upon the minds of those who conduct 
such organizations, and of the people gener- 
ally, that they are engaging in work which, if 
it is not morally degrading, is something lower 
than what Christians ought to be doing. And 
this notion, once admitted, lets in every sort of 
corruption. Our Lord knew of no neutral 



THE CHURCH SYSTEM 37 

sphere. '' He that is not with me is against 
me." And we may well say that every organ- 
ization which refuses to look upon itself as in 
harmony with the redemptive work of Christ 
is in danger of drifting into antagonism. 
No doubt, work of this kind may be really 
though unconsciously Christian : or men may 
work in the spirit of Christ, yet be hindered, 
through the moral confusion which prevails, 
from confessing Him. But what we should 
desire is that the assumption should be that 
nothing inconsistent with the spirit of Christ 
should be allowed among us: and that the 
spirit of generous love, which is his, should 
pervade the whole social movement. Even 
now, I think, if the story of the Good Samar- 
itan or of the Prodigal Son be named in any 
assembly, every heart feels that the spirit 
breathing through those parables is the true 
spirit in which it desires to act. Such a feel- 
ing should be promoted by our worshiping 
bodies ; and instead of thinking it natural 
that there should be corruption and low gain 
and moral indifference in men engaged in 
public work, whether voluntary or political, 
we should call incessantly in God's name for 
purity of administration and for Christian 



38 THE CHURCH SYSTEM 

zeal in promoting the welfare of our citizens ; 
and that we should expect to find it in public 
men, since it is work for God and man in 
which they are engaged. 

5. Similarly, the worshiping body must 
deal with the problems which are yet un- 
solved. It is very doubtful if it would be 
desirable in preaching or prayer to assume a 
particular solution, or to convert a place of 
worship into a lecture hall for discussing 
the details of such problems. But, first, the 
worshiping body may powerfully stimulate 
thought upon them, and make all men who 
are engaged in solving them, whether pro- 
fessors of moral, pohtical, and economical sci- 
ence, or editors of periodical literature, or 
practical experimentalists, feel that it is divine 
work that they are doing ; and it may accept 
these conclusions when fully tested as part 
of the revelation of truth which God is giving 
to our age. This has been realized by some 
men of science. The great physiologist. Dr. 
Carpenter, was fond of quoting the words of 
Kepler that, in gaining truth and enunciating 
it, he was thinking the thoughts and speaking 
out the will of the Almighty. He says : ^ 

1 The Psychology of Belief, Roscoe Lecture, Nov. 24, 
1873. 



THE CHURCH SYSTEM 39 

'^ Absolute truth, indeed, no man of science 
can ever hope to grasp, . . . and he denies 
the right of any one to impose on him as 
absolute truth his fallible exposition of the 
revelation contained in the teachings of re- 
ligiously inspired men : for he claims an equal 
right to be a true expositor of the revela- 
tion conveyed in the divine order of the uni- 
verse; and the real philosopher, . . . who 
is constantly striving upwards, so as either 
himself to reach, or to help his successors to 
reach, a yet loftier elevation, believes he is 
thus fulfilling his duty to the great Giver of 
his own powers of thought, and to the Divine 
Author of that nature, in which he deems it 
his highest privilege to be able to read some 
of the thoughts of God." If it be said that 
such an elevation of feeling in a scientist is 
rare, may not the reason be that we have in- 
sisted that his calling is something separate 
from religion instead of viewing it, and teach- 
ing him and all men to view it, as part of the 
work of God's Church, as the sphere in 
which a spiritual gift may be employed ? 

The other thing which the worshiping 
body may do in reference to these unsolved 
problems is to undertake some work in the 



40 THE CHURCH SYSTEM 

social order itself, or to encourage volun- 
tary efforts for social amelioration when made 
by some of its members. Such efforts may 
not reach far by themselves; yet they may 
present an object lesson which may bring 
about the larger result. A man who in the 
days of slavery should from religious motives 
have emancipated his slaves, though he might 
know well enough that the cessation of slav- 
ery could only be brought about by the pub- 
lic powers, yet might have, by his self-sacri- 
ficing action, given a vast impetus to the work 
of a Wilberf orce or a Garrison. The volun- 
tary reformatories begun in England by Lord 
Shaftesbury led to the general adoption of 
reformatories by the nation itself. The gift 
of Peabody for the housing of the poor in 
London has stimulated interest and effort in 
a work which probably can only be accom- 
plished by municipal bodies. But what I 
plead for is that, when such works pass over 
into the hands of public officers, they should 
not be thought to have lost their religious 
purpose. We must hope and even expect 
(for expectation often leads to fulfillment) 
that the public action, as it has a religious 
end in view, may be wrought in a religious 



THE CHURCH SYSTEM 41 

spirit ; we must not say that it is marred by 
secularism because it has fallen into the 
hands of those who alone can bring it to its 
full result. The Ragged School movement 
in London, no doubt, was a powerful contrib- 
utor to the universal education now con- 
ducted by the school board; but when the 
fuller education came in, many of those who 
had conducted the ragged schools clung to 
the more limited instead of striving that the 
larger system should be conducted in the same 
religious spirit. Dr. Chalmers, in his magnifi- 
cent work at Glasgow, laid down the true Hues 
for the relief of the poor ; but he contended 
that it must always be conducted through the 
parochial elders and deacons, and he fought 
strenuously against the Poor-Law. It was 
a noble effort, yet it was hardly possible that 
it should succeed. And since it has passed, 
rightly or wrongly, into the hands of the 
public guardians of the poor, we need not 
regret it. There are plenty of other fields 
for the worshipers in our churches to culti- 
vate. Let them do like many of the pioneers 
in the backwoods, who, after they had cleared 
the land and brought it under cultivation, 
and found that civilized life was pressing in 



42 THE CHURCH SYSTEM 

upon them too closely, sold their land and 
houses, and went to begin, in greater liberty 
or separation, the congenial task of subduing 
the earth. What we most desire, what has 
in a large measure been realized, is that the 
Christian and wise principles of Dr. Chalmers 
should be those on which the public relief is 
administered. We must trust in those public 
bodies for whose work we pray ; and, instead 
of treating them with a kind of excommuni- 
cation, strive confidently that they may do it 
as God's work, not their own, and do it in 
God's spirit, not in that of Mammon. 



II 

THE BIBLE 

Although the Bible, as containing the 
supreme revelation of God in Christ, is 
above the Church, yet the use of the Bible 
is an ordinance of the church system, and 
the social bearing of this ordinance is among 
the chief things to be considered in these 
lectures. The Church, indeed, has a certain 
authoritative position in relation to the Scrip- 
tures, since the canon means the rule or 
list of books as it was settled by the gradual 
and sure judgment of the Christian society : 
and this canon has vindicated itself by post- 
Eeformation criticism. An examination of 
what has been called " Novum Testamentum 
extra Canonem Keceptum '' confirms it, and 
dispenses us from going beyond the canoni- 
cal books in estimating the primitive Chris- 
tian teaching. The Church's judgment of 
what contains the true Word of God does not 
imply, as has been sometimes imagined, that 



44 THE BIBLE 

the Church is above the Bible; for true 
judgment is not willful, but is an acceptance 
or recognition of the facts already existing. 
When the popes crowned the emperors, the 
act was a ratification of the choice of the 
electors. It is true that the popes were apt 
to hold that they made the emperor, and 
could therefore unmake him. But this was a 
usurpation. The pope was bound to give the 
sanction which he administered ; and, when 
this ceased, the emperor was emperor still, 
though he was only called Emperor Elect. 
Similarly, when a man is ordained, the pre- 
sumption and profession is that he has re- 
ceived the inward call. God has made him a 
minister, and the Church or its presiding offi- 
cer acts ministerially in recognizing him, and 
does wrong if it withholds the recognition. 
And thus in determining the list of biblical 
books the Church asserts no authority over 
them, but only ratifies the voice of its Lord. 
Nevertheless, it has freedom in the use of 
them ; and must employ them for their uses 
of instruction and edification as it thinks best. 
It must also put them before the people in 
the church system of ordinances according to 
the needs which God's Providence indicates. 



THE BIBLE 46 

It will be the object of this lecture to show 
how the Bible, as a social book, should be 
used to promote social progress. 

The Bible is occupied from the very first, 
not with the individual merely, but with a 
society : and it may be said to be the history 
of the development of society under the eye 
of God — the society growing more complex 
by degrees, adapting itself to wider condi- 
tions, but preparing for the church develop- 
ments of later times, of which it gives the 
type and the principle. 

In the account of the creation, the inspira- 
tion of which lies not in the statement of the 
physical developments, but in the confession 
of the Divine unity of the whole, all leads up 
to man, who is the image of God. But man 
is not created as an individual : it is not good 
that he should be alone. " Male and female 
created He them." Henry Drummond, in his 
" Ascent of Man " (and in this he is supported 
by Fiske), has pointed out that in the earliest 
developments of life there is provision for 
sociality : as soon as the primeval cell is 
formed, another is formed from its side, and 
thus, side by side with the struggle for life 
begins the struggle for the life of another — 



46 THE BIBLE 

a type, surely, this of the account of the first 
husband and wife in Genesis. The first hu- 
man manifestation is the foundation of the 
family, and the mutual society, help and com- 
fort which this involves. The family, in its 
outworking, becomes the seed-plot in which 
all societies and relations take their rise : so 
that, just as the scientist sees in the prime- 
val atoms the promise and potency of all the 
organized world, we, with much fuller light 
upon the process, may see in the original 
human pair the beginnings of all social life — 
of the love which is all-pervading, all-sustain- 
ing, in every department, of the justice which 
goes forth into political and commercial so- 
cieties, of the social need which begets know- 
ledge and science and literature, of the sense 
of beauty which eventuates in art and po- 
etry, of the training of character which gives 
birth to schools and colleges and learned soci- 
eties. The earth is made for man as its lord, 
not for man as a single will, but for man 
as a social being. It is social and political 
man who is the image of God, and who is to 
replenish the earth and subdue it. 

The first great development is that of the 
Patriarchal Age, which represents the family 



THE BIBLE 47 

growing into the tribe. The family life of 
the Patriarchs, the scenes of Abraham's 
fatherly hope, of Isaac's peaceful tent, of 
Jacob's halting yet ascending career, and the 
story of Joseph and his brethren, have a 
charm which never can cease while lovers and 
parents and children exist upon the earth. 
They have been well utilized in the marriage 
service of the body of Christians to which I 
belong. But the family is expanding into 
the tribe. The Patriarchs are Sheikhs or 
heads of wandering communities — a fact 
which is not sufficiently emphasized in reH- 
gious teaching. Abraham has 318 servants 
who bear arms, and are able to cope with 
kings ; and this implies a tribe of at least 
1500 persons. Isaac deals with Abimelech 
as a Prince, and makes the treaty of Beer- 
sheba. Jacob makes similarly a treaty at 
Mizpah with Laban the Syrian ; and two of 
the subordinate tribes, Simeon and Levi, make 
war on the central people of Palestine at 
Shechem, their conquest being ratified by the 
father, when he says on his deathbed that he 
gives his son Joseph a portion above his 
brothers which he took from the Amorites 
with his sword and his bow. It was as head 



48 THE BIBLE 

of twelve tribes that he went to Egypt, as an 
ally of its kings that he dwelt there ; and, 
though his people were oppressed and re- 
duced to slavery, the Exodus is now regarded 
as their uprising against the oppressor, and 
the assertion of their nationality. 

The Exodus, then, and the work of Moses, 
when the tribes gained a sense of this unity 
which insured their eventually becoming one 
nation, must be regarded as the transition 
from the tribal to the national life, at least in 
principle ; and the instrument by which this 
was effected was the recognition, if not the 
codification, of their national customs by the 
law of Moses. Critics may differ as to the 
amount of actual laws which can be traced to 
the Mosaic era ; but law exists in the form of 
customs long before it is written and promul- 
gated authoritatively. They may differ also 
as to the relation of the ceremonial to the 
moral law, and the prevalence of the one or 
the other at special times ; but the rudiments 
of both must be traced to the period which 
is known as the Mosaic epoch. An attempt 
was made by M. Kenan in his " History of 
Israel " to show that this step was one of de- 
cadence rather than of progress. The tent 



THE BIBLE 49 

life of the Patriarchs, he thought, was more 
spiritual, leaving more room for the cultiva- 
tion of the ideal, more unfettered, more open 
to the Hght of heaven : the institutional life, 
that of the nation, was the reverse of all this. 
He compared it (the comparison would not 
be recognized as helpful to his argument by 
those concerned) to the change which was 
brought about by the unification of Germany. 
Where were the Goethes and the Fichtes? 
Instead of them was the positive and authori- 
tative Bismarck. But human life tends to 
imification and to the closing up of the social 
relations ; and the wisdom of faithful men 
consists, not in barring or banning the inevi- 
table changes, but in infusing into the new 
relations the divine spirit of love. Some 
color might be thought to be given to Re- 
nan's contention by the words of St. Paul 
when he contrasts the faith of Abraham with 
the law, and says that the law, which was 
480 years after, could not make the faith of 
more effect. But what St. Paul combated 
was not the law in itself, but the spirit of 
legalism. The faith which he prescribed was 
one which put aside, no doubt, the letter, but 
one which made the law, that is, the detailed 



60 THE BIBLE 

social relations of men, all the more stringent. 
" Do we destroy the law through faith ? Nay, 
but we establish the law." It is evident that 
prophets and Psalmists had not only no quar- 
rel with the law of just relations as estab- 
lished by their lawgivers, but delighted in it, 
and felt, like the Deuteronomist, that it was 
their very life. We must be progressive in 
our thoughts, and recognize that the larger 
law of the national society came in accord- 
ance with the Divine leading. 

But the law of Israel has a special charac- 
ter. It was eminently a social law. As we 
read it, we cannot but be reminded of some 
of the ecclesiastical codes of the Middle Ages 
and of that which it was attempted to intro- 
duce as partly an embodiment, partly a sub- 
stitute for them, into England in the reign of 
Edward VI. under the name of Reformatio 
Legum. In these, all matters of conduct, of 
doctrine, of ritual, of organization, of judica- 
ture, of social obligation, are mixed together. 
And, although this is confusing, and vexa- 
tious to the legal or scientific mind, it has the 
merit of avoiding the harshness of mere legal 
enactments. There is a sense of filial rela- 
tionship toward God, and of brotherly feel- 



THE BIBLE 51 

ing toward men in the law of Israel, which 
we shall hardly find elsewhere, and which 
preludes the " sweeter manners, purer laws " 
now partly realized, partly aspired to, in our 
modern states. 

This is especially seen in three features of 
it, all of which bear on our special subject. 
In the first place, it cares beyond all else for 
the poor and hopeless members of the society. 
Its first provisions are for the slave and the 
debtor ; and these are spoken of constantly 
as the poor brothers. While other codes of 
ancient times, right down to the times of 
Hadrian, gave no rights to slaves, and while 
the question of debts and mortgages gave rise 
to revolutions at Athens and Rome, the law 
of the Hebrews insisted that the slave should 
have his rights against the most powerful 
master, that the slave girl should have her 
dowry, that at the end of seven years the ser- 
vant should go free, and have some help 
given him for his future career : while the 
enactment of a year of jubilee prevented a 
poor man's property being permanently alien- 
ated from his family by the foreclosing of a 
mortgage. Secondly, there is a note almost 
of socialism, certainly of the trustfulness of a 



62 THE BIBLE 

family, in the provisions of Deut. xxiii. and 
xxiv., that the man who had abundance, 
whether in the shape of grain, or grapes, or 
olives, should leave portions of it for the poor 
to glean. It is a protest against the extreme 
view of private property, a demand that, at 
whatever cost to the theory of rights, the poor 
brother shall not be let starve. And, thirdly, 
the whole of this legislation is reckoned as 
proceeding from the mouth of God — an asser- 
tion, surely, not that God, as a great Power, 
has imposed a moral law, but that, wherever 
justice is, there is God, and that his fatherly 
love has to do with legislation and with all the 
common interests of life. By this, God lived 
among his people* When we see, in a Jew- 
ish synagogue, the book of the law solemnly 
taken out of the recess which represents the 
Holy of Holies of the ancient Temple, and 
carried round among the adoring congrega- 
tion, we have an image of what the law was 
in its intention, the righteousness of God per- 
meating the life of the nation. It is true 
that this ideal was but very partially attained, 
even at the best, and that through forsaking 
the true law the nation was ruined ; but the 
complaints of the Psalmists and prophets 



THE BIBLE 63 

show that in the conscience of the nation the 
true ideal was present ; the social law was the 
law of God. And instances, such as we find 
in the beautiful idyll of Ruth, or in the no- 
ble refusal of Naboth to sell the inheritance 
of his fathers, or in the appeal of Jeremiah 
(xxxiv.) and of Nehemiah (v.) to the wealthy 
in the matters of debts and mortgages, show 
that the ideal was at least not wholly inopera- 
tive. Indeed, when we remember that the 
larger number of the kings of Judah are said 
to have served the Lord, which implies the 
enforcement of the law, we may believe that 
the oppression, against which we find such 
vehement protests in the Psalms and the pro- 
phets, was the exception, and that the good 
social customs of the law prevailed very widely, 
especially in the country districts. 

It has often been pointed out how the 
Psalmists and prophets contrast the ceremo- 
nial with the moral law. But, perhaps, 
hardly sufficient stress has been laid on the 
great importance attached by them to the 
law of social relations. As regards the cere- 
monial law, it is true that in its forms it was 
more evanescent than the rest. It was, in its 
detailed arrangements, in all probability the 



64 THE BIBLE 

product of the age immediately after the 
return from Babylon, though the elements of 
it had been present throughout the history. 
It was in itself but a shadow of things to 
come. But the great idea of holiness on 
which it is grounded, with the subsidiary 
ideas of the confession of sin, of reconciliation 
and s6l£-sacrifice and adoration, go beyond 
the law of right relations, or, it may be truer 
to say, sublimate it and carry it to a higher 
sphere. They prevent the moral and social 
law from lapsing into a list of formal regula- 
tions. And, if we include the feasts in the 
ceremonial law, we can see how, at least after 
the exile, they became the most potent instru- 
ments of upholding good social relations. 
Psalm cxxii., which represents the tribes com- 
ing up from various parts of the country, 
and rejoicing that their feet shall stand in 
the gates of Jerusalem, speaks of the Prince, 
and the law courts, and the Temple, and the 
great social gatherings, realizing them all as 
instinct with the divine, bound together in 
unity by the indwelling of God. 

But the ceremonial law has passed away, 
and it is only by a doubtful analogy that 
anything similar can be restored in the Chris- 



THE BIBLE 56 

tian dispensation. 0£ the moral law of the 
Decalogue it is unnecessary to speak. That 
it had the most complete adherence of the 
Psalmists and Prophets we cannot doubt. 
But it may well be asked whether the ten 
commandments by themselves were suflB.cient 
to be their meditation all the day. The writer 
of Psalm cxix., for instance, speaks of stat- 
utes, laws, judgments, which seem to indicate 
a set of detailed enactments ; and we may 
therefore believe that he had before him the 
laws of Moses as we find them in the Book of 
the Covenant in Exodus and as adapted to 
a later time in Deuteronomy. If in addition 
to these he had Leviticus in his mind, it is 
clear that he laid little stress upon it. Cere- 
monies are just alluded to, and no more. 
They must have been felt to be quite in 
a secondary place. But the whole body of 
legal provisions for the social welfare of the 
people were reckoned as embodying the Di- 
vine justice and love. It was said by a great 
writer on English law in the last generation 
that the law of England was an extension of 
the ten commandments ; and it is in a similar 
sense that all the Mosaic legislation, though 
developed at a later time, could be felt to be 



66 THE BIBLE 

from God. " The Lord spake it unto Moses/' 
not in so many words, but in principle. 

It was the duty of the rulers — kings at 
the capital or the Shophetim, or judges in 
the various towns and villages throughout the 
land — to enforce this law; and David was 
traditionally beheved to have been the model 
of one who gave effect to it. When we read 
the story of the woman of Tekoah, or the 
supposititious case brought before him by 
Nathan, we can realize what happened when 
" the King sat in the gate " and all had access 
to him. The divine principle on which the 
law was founded, rather than anything like 
our statute or case law, would be that on 
which his decisions were founded : but we 
may well believe that the " last words " attrib- 
uted to him represent his principle of action : 
" He that ruleth men must be just, ruling in 
the fear of God." This was felt to be the 
moral power by which the nation was held 
together. The withdrawal of it under Eeho- 
boam rent it asunder : the non-observance of 
it by the later kings and rulers, who became 
the evil shepherds of the people, was the cause 
of all their calamities ; for, when justice fails, 
the nation is ruined. 



THE BIBLE 57 

How important the social law was is evi- 
denced by the whole of the history of Israel. 
We may explain in a perfectly natural way 
the fact that when the law was observed the 
nation prospered, that when it was neglected 
the nation fell. A simple agricultural people, 
bound together by mutual justice, would be 
at peace amongst themselves, and free gener- 
ally from foreign entanglements, and strong, 
if the necessity came, for self-defense. And 
this was their condition when they adhered to 
the true God and his law. On the other 
hand the service of the false gods, which ad- 
mitted of lust and injustice, ruined the coun- 
try industrially and pohtically. There are 
two passages in the prophet Jeremiah which 
bring this before us vividly. In the one (ch. 
xxxiv.) the princes have oppressed the poorer 
men and reduced them to slavery, and they 
are induced by the prophet's appeals to restore 
them to hberty in accordance with the social 
law which demanded that the Hebrew slave 
should go free on the seventh year (Exod. 
xxiii.) ; but afterwards they break their word, 
and resume their oppressive attitude. This, 
the prophet sees, will most surely bring ruin ; 
and that ruin is the result of God's displea- 



58 THE BIBLE 

sure. The other is his condemnation of 
Jehoiakim (xxii. 15), who had neglected his 
duty as the enforcer of the law, and had cared 
only for his own luxury. " Shalt thou reign 
because thou closest thyself in cedar ? Did 
not thy father [Josiah] eat and drink, and do 
judgment and justice ? He judged the cause 
of the poor and needy ; then it was well with 
him : was not this to know me, saith the 
Lord?'' To care for the poor was, in the 
prophet's estimation, to know God. 

The social bearing, then, of the law and 
history of the Jews is evident, and I will 
point out at the close of this lecture how it 
may be appKed to our own social state. But 
the pressing question is. How far the New 
Testament carries us along the same path; 
how far it would deviate. I think we may 
say that in this the words of Christ fully ap- 
ply : " I came not to destroy, but to fulfill." 

It may be thought that in the interval be- 
tween the Old and New Testaments the situ- 
ation had been entirely altered, that the Jews 
were no longer a self-governing people, and 
that their law consequently was in abeyance ; 
that, therefore, the ecclesia or congregation 
of Israel was no longer a political body, but 



THE BIBLE 69 

confined to public worship and its narrow cir- 
cle of interests ; that it was, as has been said, 
no longer a nation, but a church (giving to 
the word church the more limited meaning 
of later times). But there is much to be 
said against this. In the first place, Eastern 
modes of government permit a much larger 
range of power to local communities than do 
the Western ; and especially to religious com- 
munities. Even now, in Turkey, the Mar- 
onite or Syrian or Armenian churches have 
a considerable range of political power, and 
their chiefs are political as well as religious 
officers. Similarly, we see that, in the begin- 
ning of the Captivity, a Jewish governor was 
appointed for those who remained in Pales- 
tine. The Persian system of satraps was no 
doubt more drastic and left less local power. 
Yet the appointment of a Jewish prince, 
Zerubbabel, and afterwards of a Jewish 
Tishatha, Nehemiah, shows that there was no 
intention of substituting Persian law for that 
of the Jews. And we may believe that this 
laxer system, which would allow greater play 
to local institutions, remained under the Per- 
sian and even the Macedonian rule. It was 
Antiochus Epiphanes, in the second century 



60 THE BIBLE 

before Christ, who first attempted any serious 
interference with the social customs and reli- 
gion of the Jews ; and it was this interference 
which led to the revolt of the Maccabees. 
That revolt issued in a complete independ- 
ence, which endured under the Asmonean 
princes till the Roman rule began. But the 
Roman rule varied greatly in its stringency ; 
and the Herods who bore sway under it pro- 
fessed the Jewish faith, which could not be 
dissociated from the customs of the Mosaic 
law. Even where a cause came before a Ro- 
man judge, he would take into consideration 
the laws and customs of the Jews : we find 
both Claudius Lysias and Festus desiring to 
be informed on such points when dealing with 
the case of St. Paul. We may compare with 
this the deference to Hindoo customs in the 
administration of justice by English judges in 
India. The Sanhedrin also claimed a com- 
plete power, even of life and death, and re- 
tained a large part of it to the end, a power 
which found its counterpart in the local or- 
ganizations of the synagogues all through the 
country. We may say, therefore, that the 
Jews retained at the Christian era a consider- 
able power to enforce their own law, espe- 



THE BIBLE 61 

cially on Its social side ; and that they had 
recent experience o£ a time in which they had 
had all the attributes of a sovereign, inde- 
pendent state. 

When, then, our Lord began his ministry 
He was fully aware of the meaning which the 
words in which He announced his mission 
would bear to those who heard them. The 
kingdom of heaven would have a moral 
meaning, no doubt, as the reign of righteous- 
ness and love ; but it would have a social mean- 
ing, as implying that the good customs of the 
divine law would once more come into observ- 
ance ; and a political meaning, since the 
words used seem to involve the expectation of 
a king who would restore the just Davidic ad- 
ministration. To the Galileans, to whom his 
teaching was first addressed, this would spe- 
cially imply that they would no longer be de- 
spised and trampled on by the proud possessors 
of power at Jerusalem: they welcomed the 
day of deliverance, as the Germans hailed the 
voice of Luther, which gave a promise that 
their country would no longer be the despised 
milch-cow of the Papacy. How far did our 
Lord sanction these aspirations? 

Evidently, the wish for a national ruler He 



62 THE BIBLE 

entirely discountenanced. Their wish to make 
Him a king, which meant, no doubt, that He 
should repeat the attempts of men like Judas 
the Gaulonite, merely caused Him to retreat 
into some desert place. He would not sanc- 
tion violence as the means of winning a king- 
dom which was before all things a kingdom 
of inward morality. Once only, when He 
could no longer be misunderstood, when He 
knew that in a few days He would suffer re- 
jection and death, did He allow his Galilean 
sympathizers to acclaim Him as their king. 
But this act was one of great significance : it 
was evidently a sanction for their belief that 
both kingdom and kingship were capable of 
a real external embodiment. His primary 
care, of course, was for the formation of the 
inward spirit of righteousness in his followers, 
and this He explains in the Sermon on the 
Mount by showing that it is an inward right- 
eousness, that of the heart, first and above all, 
and that it is one which involves self-denial, 
self-renunciation — on which He dwells more 
and more as the end draws near. But He 
shows himself ahve to the fact that this in- 
ward spirit must work itself out into external 
acts and social relations, of which the social 



THE BIBLE 63 

law of Israel was at hand to furnish the 
type. 

It would have been contrary to the princi- 
ples of Christ's teaching that He should lay 
down the form which the society of his disci- 
ples should take. But it is as contrary to 
these principles to affirm that He forbade them 
to organize themselves as families or munici- 
palities or nations, as to affirm that He meant 
to impose any special form of these institu- 
tions upon them. The principle of rule, of 
order, and discipline, as was said by Pearson 
in commenting on the article Church in the 
creed, is alone divine : the manner in which 
it should be exercised depends on the actual 
circumstances in which the Christian commu- 
nity is placed. 

The cardinal words of Christ's teaching are 
the kingdom and righteousness. " Seek ye 
first the kingdom of God and his righteous- 
ness." I have touched on the first of these. 
I ask now what would be the idea of right- 
eousness which would be present in his mind 
and in that of his hearers ? Surely, it could be 
no other than that of which they were read- 
ing continually in the synagogues, that is, the 
idea of social beneficence. It was this which 



64 THE BIBLE 

He proclaimed in the synagogue of Nazareth 
and said that it was now fulfilled in their ears. 
" The spirit of the Lord God is upon me, be- 
cause the Lord hath anointed me to preach the 
gospel to the poor; He hath sent me to heal the 
broken hearted, to preach deliverance to the 
captive, and the recovery of sight to the blind, 
to preach the acceptable year of the Lord." 
This was the new jubilee year introduced by 
the Son of God, the festival of the consum- 
mation of all those loving social relations 
which the ancient law had established. It is 
true that these relations must never be outward 
relations merely. The inward freedom was 
much more than the freedom from external 
servitude. But it is not true that, among 
men, living as men must in society, the in- 
ward feeling has no external expression. The 
free man must act out his freedom and win 
both social and public sanction for it. The 
beneficent man must show his beneficence 
over the whole range of his possible action. 

Accordingly, our Lord says distinctly, it 
is more possible that heaven and earth should 
pass than that one jot or tittle of the law 
should fail till all be fulfilled; and, when He 
continues his exposition of the law, He says 



THE BIBLE 65 

that the righteousness of his followers must 
exceed that of the Scribes and Pharisees, 
otherwise they will not even enter the king- 
dom ; implying, surely, that there is a real 
kingdom and a real, that is a social, right- 
eousness. And He proceeds to give typical 
instances of this, such as never to offend the 
little ones, that is, to have special regard to 
the young, the simple ones, the weaker classes : 
or to refrain from violent contemptuous 
words, which break up social unity : or to cut 
off our own members rather than practice greed 
and lust : and, above all, to be generous, giving 
freely, accepting wrongs that are done to us, 
not exacting that those among whom we are 
living should show themselves specially good 
men before we will help them, but rather 
trusting that kindness may win them : " So ye 
shall be the children of your Father, for He 
maketh his sun to rise upon the evil and the 
good, and sendeth his rain upon the just and 
upon the unjust." 

In these and similar sayings we see the es- 
tablishment of social relations, not in a merely 
legal way, but on the principles of faith and 
love, yet in entire harmony with the loving 
righteousness which pervaded the social law 



66 THE BIBLE 

o£ Israel. And with this agrees the whole 
tenor of the life of Christ. The three great 
religious duties of the Jews, almsgiving, fast- 
ing, and prayer, He accepts fully, and urges 
them on his followers, only purifying them 
from formahsm. His miracles are not to be 
viewed in relation to physical laws, about 
which the evangelists knew little or nothing, 
but to the bodies and souls of men : they were 
good works, the evidences of a supreme benefi- 
cence, by one who " went about doing good." 
The parables, especially those relating to the 
common life of men, the Good Samaritan, the 
Prodigal Son, the story of the Rich Man and 
Lazarus, all breathe the same spirit of social 
kindness, the pardon of wrongdoing, the lift- 
ing up of the weak. When He sends his disci- 
ples on their first and typical journey to an- 
nounce the Kingdom of God, the charge He 
gives them is still that of social kindness. Heal 
the sick, cast out devils, raise the dead, heal 
the leper ; freely ye have received, freely give. 
This is the interpretation of the words, " As 
ye go proclaim, saying, the Kingdom of God 
is come." So to the disciples of the Baptist 
the evidence is given. Tell John what ye see 
and hear: "the blind receive their sight . . . 



THE BIBLE 67 

and the poor have the good news proclaimed 
to them." 

If then we ask further, how far this prin- 
ciple of beneficence was to have its issue in 
custom or in positive law, or how far it was 
to be sanctioned by external rule and force, 
the answer must be that this was left to the 
action of time and circumstance, which are 
also the ordinance of God, and to the prompt- 
ings of good sense and right judgment, which 
are the voice of the Holy Spirit. Nothing is 
prejudged: but all is to be guided by the 
master principle of justice and beneficence. 
Yet evidently the principles and the illustra- 
tions given of them are such as must in- 
fluence both custom and legislation, and have 
done so wherever Christianity has come in. 
The marriage relation, for instance, in which 
the principle of our Lord's words is that 
the weaker sex should have its rights, and 
should not be subject to male caprice, must 
be influenced by the spirit of his words 
rather than by logical inferences from the 
letter of them. The mode in which quarrels 
should be settled must be in accordance with 
the teaching of Matt, xviii., that is, that we 
should be as little as possible judges in our own 



68 THE BIBLE 

cause, which leads to the recourse to friendly 
advice, or to just courts of law, or to the prin- 
ciple of arbitration. The words which de- 
scribe our Lord's own social attitude, " The son 
of man came not to be ministered unto but to 
minister," give us the principle on which we 
may claim the service of all in the cause of all, 
whether in benevolence or in civic duty, in 
taxation or conscription. The denunciations 
of mere selfish wealth are a sanction for the 
constant effort towards social equality. 

Now, if we pass from Christ to the Church, 
in which his spirit manifested itself, we find 
this social bearing at once acknowledged. It 
was a community of brothers. They freely im- 
parted to one another : and it was this spirit, 
and the action growing out of it, which led to 
the first organization of the Church. I will not 
dwell upon the well known and alluring pic- 
ture of the early Church at Jerusalem ; but 
it is important to emphasize the fact that 
the care for the poor led to its organization. 
And when the next great crisis came, that of 
the admission of the Gentiles, it was signaHzed 
by the importance given to these acts of social 
kindness. The first act of communion be- 
tween the Gentile Church at Antioch and the 



THE BIBLE 69 

Jewish Church at Jerusalem is the sending o£ 
alms to the elders at Jerusalem by the hands 
of Barnabas and Saul. Either at that time 
or at his next visit, when the compact was 
made between Paul and the Three that the 
one should go to the Circumcision and the 
other to the Gentile, the pledge of union was 
the same hnk of social beneficence : " Only 
they would that we should remember the poor, 
the same which I also was forward to do.'' 
And we know how earnestly St. Paul labored 
in the fulfillment of this undertaking. We 
may observe further that in the Epistles this 
side of the Christian life is always prominent. 
To the Thessalonians, in the very first group 
of his Epistles, he urges the duty of honorable 
independence in many matters, putting him- 
self forward as an example. In the second 
group he spends a large part of the Epistle 
in the exhortation to generous gifts for the 
poor at Jerusalem : of the other two groups I 
will speak in a moment. But great stress 
should be laid on his speech to the elders at 
Ephesus, where his exhortation to them is 
specially connected with their social and elee- 
mosynary character. He is himself the ex- 
ample of the generous labor which enables a 



70 THE BIBLE 

man to help others : " These hands have min- 
istered unto my necessities and to them that 
were with me." " I have coveted no man's 
gold or apparel." " Ye ought so to labor and 
to support the weak, and to remember the say- 
ing of the Lord Jesus which He spake : It 
is more blessed to give than to receive." It 
is pertinent to observe how the natural de- 
velopment of the Church bears witness to this. 
The earliest functions, which were prominent 
in the time of St. Paul, were those of the 
apostles and prophets, pastors and teachers, 
while the bishops and deacons who had to do 
with the social and eleemosynary work, are 
only mentioned in the Epistle to the Philip- 
pians, — the one which was written to acknow- 
ledge the receipt of the Church's gift to St. 
Paul : in the document called " The Teaching 
of the Twelve Apostles to the Gentiles," which 
is commonly referred to as the Didache, the 
prophets, apostles, and teachers are still 
thought of as the highest, though their in- 
fluence is visibly waning, and the bishops and 
deacons, the social officers, are commended for 
honor because they also exercise some of the 
prophetic gifts ; but later on the earlier class 
of leaders disappears, and those who adminis- 
tered and ruled became supreme. 



THE BIBLE 71 

We see this especially in the Pastoral 
Epistles. There the social arrangements of the 
Church come still more into prominence ; the 
deacons and deaconesses who have to do with 
these arrangements, and the bishops who su- 
perintend them, are the special subjects of 
the apostolic injunctions ; the rich are warned 
against selfishness, and charged to be rich in 
good works and willing to communicate their 
good things to others. And the government 
or ruling which springs out of these circum- 
stances is evidently the chief concern of the 
officers of the Church, whether, as bishops, 
they have the general direction and the special 
care of the funds of the Society, or whether, 
as elders — a more general term — they are 
occupied mainly with discipline. For the well 
known and controverted text about the elders 
who rule well does not imply that a special 
class of elders were ruHng elders, but- that 
all were rulers, all occupied with the social 
work of the conmiunity, while some specially 
labored in the word and in teaching. It 
would seem that, as far as official organization 
goes, the Church of the Bible was organized 
on the opposite principle from that which pre- 
vails amongst us. We restrict teaching and 



72 THE BIBLE 

prayer in the congregation to the official 
minister, and consider the social and chari- 
table work as a secondary matter which any 
one or no one may engage in. In the early 
Church the officers were charged primarily 
with the affairs of the Church as a social body, 
while, for a long time at least, the work of 
prayer and exhortation was free to all the 
members. 

We must glance, before concluding this 
sketch of the social bearing of the Bible, at 
the testimony of its last book, the Eevelation 
of St. John. It begins with the messages to 
the churches ; it ends with the picture of the 
Holy City ; and it is to this city that the long 
avenue of judgments, of plagues, of convul- 
sions of nature and of society leads up. It 
stands in contrast with great Babylon, the im- 
age of greedy and callous wealth, among the 
wares of which are the souls of men. And 
though the picture is that of sensuous imagery, 
as all poetry must be, we feel that the gates of 
pearl and the streets of gold, and the city lying 
foursquare, are the images of a splendid soci- 
ety, pure and loving and complete. It is not 
without significance for us, " upon whom the 
ends of the world have come," that the Biblc;, 



THE BIBLE 73 

which begins with a garden, ends with a city. 
We are apt to say that God made the country 
and man the town. But we should more fol- 
low the teaching of the Bible if, like Soc- 
rates — who said that it was not the flowers 
and the fountains from which he could learn, 
but the men within the city — we should say 
that it is God who through man made the city. 
It is a vain thing to go back upon human 
progress. The industrial revolution which has 
made our great cities, and which through 
them supphes the needs of mankind, is part 
of God's Providence ; and what we have to 
do, the real task of our generation, is to face 
the problems which city life presents, applying 
to them the light which the Bible gives us, 
and determining that, so far as in us lies, and 
by the power of God and of Christ, London 
and New York shall not be as Babylon, but 
as the New Jersualem. 

There are two points which we may shortly 
discuss in reference to the social influence of 
the Bible in its appHcation to our own social 
state. 

The first of these may be stated, I hope not 
irreverently, in the question : Was Christ a 
socialist ? It is not uncommon with men who 



74 THE BIBLE 

look upon Him, so to speak, from without, to 
claim his teaching as sociahstic : and at first 
sight it may seem to be so. Such phrases as 
" Blessed are ye poor," " Blessed are the meek, 
for they shall inherit the earth," " Give to 
him that asketh thee," " The beggar died 
and was carried by angels into Abraham's 
bosom ; the rich man also died and was buried, 
and in Hades he lifted up his eyes, being in 
torment," — seem to have in them something 
of the spirit of socialism, that is, of the spirit 
which would aim at altering men's external 
conditions by some peremptory means, and 
would in a literal sense put down the mighty 
and exalt the humble. M. Renan has endea- 
vored to trace what I may call the pedigree 
of the word meek, which is applied to the peo- 
ple of Israel in the Psalms and is enshrined 
in the Beatitudes of the Gospel. He thinks 
that in the time of the later kings of Judah, 
beginning from Hezekiah, when Jerusalem 
became more definitely the religious centre 
of the nation, a class of men was formed who 
frequented the purlieus of the Temple, sim- 
ilar to the class which may be found round 
some of the great churches in Roman Cath- 
olic countries, attending all the services, and 



THE BIBLE 76 

largely depending on the alms o£ the wor- 
shipers. This class^ who had the title o£ 
Anavim, or the meek, were the moral ancestors 
of the Ebionim, or poor ones, of the first cen- 
tury, from whom the heretical Judaizing sect of 
the Ebionites took their names. The Anavim, 
from their constant attendance at the Temple, 
formed a religious class or sect, with opinions 
of their own, claiming the special favor of 
Jehovah ; and by degrees came to be consid- 
ered a sort of type of the national character. 
To them Renan attributes the sentiments 
which we find in many of the Psalms, of 
which Psa. xxxvii. may be taken as the chief 
example, the Psahn in which occurs the verse, 
" The meek spirited shall possess the earth, 
and shall rejoice in the abundance of peace." 
There is a tone of complaint against the pride 
and exactions of the rich, and of faith in 
God's special favor to themselves ; and a con- 
fident expectation that by some judgment or 
revolution these conditions will be reversed ; 
the proud rich " will be cut off as the grass 
and withered like the green herb,'' and the 
Anavim will enter into their place. This char- 
acter or tone of mind came, Renan thinks, to 
be accepted as the right or orthodox tone for 



76 THE BIBLE 

the nation, so that we have such expressions 
apphed to Israel as that o£ Psa. cxHv. " He 
will beautify the meek with salvation." The 
Anavim, he considers, became "the poor/' 
" the meek '' of Gospel times, and upon them, 
that is, those who represented this tone or spirit, 
the blessing of Christ was pronounced. The 
teaching flowing from this would comprehend 
such commands as " Give alms of such things 
as ye have and all things are clear unto you," 
or the command to the young ruler to sell all 
and give to the poor, or the parable of Dives 
and Lazarus ; and the doctrine of the kingdom 
would be the assurance that the Anavim and 
Ebionim and those who partook of their spirit 
would have a time of happiness by which their 
present sufferings would be compensated. 
With this he would join the Epistle of St. 
James, which has an Ebionite appearance, and 
is full of complaints against the proud and 
wealthy. " Let the brother of low degree re- 
joice in that he is exalted, but the rich in that 
he is made low, because as the flower of the 
grass he shall pass away ; ... so also shall 
the rich man fade away in his ways." " Go 
to, now, ye rich men, weep and howl for the 
miseries that shall come upon you." 



THE BIBLE 77 

I think a sound judgment would say that 
the true teaching both of the Old and of the 
New Testament lays a much greater stress on 
the dangers of wealth than we are apt to do ; 
that it has a special feeling of compassion for 
the disinherited of the earth ; that it brings 
out, in contrast to the morality of Greece or 
Eome, the value of humility and meekness, 
and the virtues which often are found among 
the poor, submission and resignation and de- 
pendence upon God. But the low-spirited 
pauper spirit is alien to the religion of the 
Bible ; still more, the degrading, envious ten- 
dency, which would bring all down to a low 
level, such as the lower socialism represents, 
as it is pictured for us in such a poem as 
Mrs. Browning's " Aurora Leigh." It would 
seem as if all that such socialism aimed at was 
that man should eat and drink more plenti- 
fully and be more pleasantly housed and bed- 
ded ; and that all thought of the higher life 
of culture or of moral elevation was left out 
of sight. We should be very slow to believe 
that there was in our Lord's teaching any 
complicity whatever with such a tendency. On 
the other hand, there is enough in the pas- 
sages we have touched on to make us revise 



78 THE BIBLE 

some o£ our estimates. It is unquestionable 
that meekness came to be the chosen charac- 
teristic of Israel, and that our Lord ratified 
this when he fulfilled the prophecy of Zecha- 
riah, and rode as the king of Israel in the 
character of meekness. And we may well ask 
whether Christians in themselves and in their 
teaching lay the due stress upon this side 
of the Christian character; and still more 
whether in their social action they realize that 
it is with the meek, not with the self-assertive, 
that God dwells, and that it is for the eleva- 
tion of the humble and the poor that the Chris- 
tian Church is bound above all things to labor. 
That is the social question for the solution of 
which we must be seeking day by day, in a 
spirit of indulgent kindness towards those who 
may still be called the meek of the earth. 

The other question which is presented by 
the Bible as a book of social righteousness 
is, how far its teachings are to be taken in 
a literal and absolute sense. I confess I can 
hardly read with patience such books as those 
of Tolstoi, which, taking Christ's words as 
literal commands, draw from them inferences 
of absolute anarchy. They seem to me to 
misunderstand the nature of our Lord's teach- 



THE BIBLE 79 

ing, which advisedly uses paradox and trusts 
to us to interpret it, and to impute to Christ a 
lack of common sense. The true answer must 
be, first, that it is a spirit and a stimulus which 
Christ meant to give rather than direct rules 
for our guidance : and, secondly, that in the 
apphcation of this spirit to action the altera- 
tion of times and customs must be taken into 
account. It has sometimes been a stumbling 
block to men to read of our Lord driving out 
the buyers and sellers from the Temple : but 
it is just such an action as would not be 
thought strange in one of the Dervishes in 
the East at the present day. Professor Vam- 
bery describes actions of his own of a simi- 
lar kind, when he personated a Dervish among 
some of the Turkoman tribes. On one occa- 
sion, when he came into the presence of one 
of their Emirs, and was resisted in his ap- 
proach to him, he took off his slipper and 
dealt a blow to the man who opposed him 
and sat down unbidden at the Emir's right 
hand. Such an action would rouse nothing 
but indignation in us; but it won him ac- 
ceptance with the men with whom he was 
dealing. It is said that the late Mr. Francis 
Newman declared that he could not accept 



80 THE BIBLE 

Christ's social teachings because He evidently 
knew nothing of political economy. But the 
principle of generosity and of interest in the 
weaker classes is what is essential ; to which 
we must add the perfect reasonableness of 
our Lord's attitude, and such words as these : 
" Why even of your own selves judge ye not 
that which is right ? " If a man is possessed 
with a generous spirit of social redemption, all 
the studies which bear upon the welfare of 
the poor, aU the economical and political sci- 
ences, receive an impulse which no mere utili- 
tarianism can give them. May we not say 
that the pursuit of them becomes, like any 
endowment when it is sanctified, a gift of the 
Holy Spirit ? It has been a stumbling block, 
again, to some good men, that there is no 
direct pronouncement, even in the Gospels or 
the Epistles, against such customs as slavery 
and polygamy. But the principle is there 
which must destroy them. The principle of 
justice, and the incessant aim at spiritual ele- 
vation which we find throughout the New 
Testament, are absolutely incompatible with 
practices which treat men as chattels and wo- 
men as playthings. To have given the fuU 
application of the true principles either in the 



THE BIBLE 81 

East or the West in the jBrst century would 
have been to excite a bitter and fruitless con- 
troversy, with at best revolutions and counter- 
revolutions. " Husbands, love your wives as 
Christ loved the Church/' and '' Masters, give 
to your servants that which is just and equal, 
knowing that ye also have a master in hea- 
ven," and " Servants, obey, not with eye- 
service as menpleasers, but in singleness of 
heart . • . for ye serve the Lord Christ," and 
^' not now as a servant, but as a brother be- 
loved," are sayings which lift us above contro- 
versy, and by their constant working insure 
the true result. And we may be sure that, 
though we may not see our way through 
social questions by any ready-made solution, 
such as universal pensions, or the rebuilding 
of all bad dwellings, or the confiscation of all 
fortunes above a certain value, or the passing 
over to the State of all industries, these ques- 
tions will by patient thought and experiment 
be solved. It is by the gradual working of 
conviction, by the upward struggle of the 
people themselves, by experiments attempted 
here and there which show us where there 
is firm ground to stand on, that the great 
changes needed must be wrought out ; and 



82 THE BIBLE 

above all by the infusion into all social deal- 
ings of the spirit of unselfish Christian love. 

But there are several points which we may 
touch upon as showing how suitable the 
Bible is, when rightly handled, to be the book 
of social reform. 

1. The Bible speaks of men as one great 
family, ^^ where there is neither Jew nor Greek, 
bond or free, male or female : " and we mav 
surely add, neither rich nor poor, employer or 
employed, white man or colored. We have 
all the same interest in the promotion of jus- 
tice and loving-kindness, and we must move 
towards its realization together. The tend- 
ency of men in the present day is towards 
aggregation, and the Bible speaks of men, 
not as separate individuals, but as aggregate. 
Even in the Psalms, which seem to describe 
individual experiences, it is the opinion of 
one of our foremost critics that the individual 
speaks in the name of the nation. Our Lord 
spoke to great masses of men on the mount 
or on the seashore ; and, though He dealt 
with individuals also, it was the heart of the 
people which He sought to turn to God, it 
was to the masses that He preached God's 
fatherhood and the brotherhood of men. It 



THE BIBLE 83 

was the nation and its capital over which He 
wept because it knew not its day of visita- 
tion. It was to the masses gathered from all 
parts of the world that St. Peter preached at 
Pentecost : it was to masses of men, though 
they were still in heathenism, that St. Paul 
preached from Mars Hill the sublime truths 
of all men bearing the divine image, and of 
their moving and having their being in Him. 
It was not the Philippian jailer by himself 
who was converted and baptized, but all his 
household with him. And in later days the 
simple Saxons or Franks came in, not by ones 
and twos, but by thousands, to go where their 
chiefs were leading them. Ours is a day of 
great aggregates of population, and public 
sentiment flies from mouth to mouth, or from 
the printed sheet to thousands at once. We 
have looked mainly hitherto at the effects of 
the Bible on individuals, issuing in conversion 
and personal holiness, and these effects have 
been great. May we not expect far greater 
effects when its social character is revealed to 
classes and societies and nations ? 

2. The special moral feature of the masses 
is generosity and good nature. These are to 
be found in the Bible, and especially in the 



84 THE BIBLE 

teaching of our Lord, sublimated and con- 
nected with God and with heaven, but with- 
out losing their human character. We may 
have observed how, in public assemblies, any 
allusion to the Good Samaritan, or the Great 
Supper from which none are excluded, or the 
social precepts of the Sermon on the Mount 
is accepted as touching the popular mind. 
Such words as " Give to him that asketh 
thee," or " If any man shall compel thee to go 
a mile, go with him twain," are eminently 
the suggestions of a good nature which has 
been impressed with a higher motive. And 
when religion is connected with gatherings 
like the harvest festivals, or some national 
thanksgiving, the harshness of life seems to 
be shamed away, and the kindly feelings 
of brotherhood are drawn out. It is of the 
character of the Bible to take the plain ele- 
ments of human nature, and, acknowledging 
these, to graft upon them the fuller and 
nobler developments of religion. St. Paul at 
Lystra is thought to have taken a hymn of 
thanksgiving for the fruits of the earth in use 
among the simple though idolatrous people, 
and to have used this to draw men to the 
living God, whose bounteousness was wit- 



THE BIBLE 85 

nessed by the harvest. And so we may hope 
that the kindly feelings which we find in the 
masses of men may pass into the higher 
sphere^ and make an entrance for the deeper 
love of Christian sacrifice and for the sense 
of the fatherly goodness which is the source 
of all spiritual life. 

3. The Bible is the book of forgiveness ; 
and there is nothing which appeals to the 
masses of men so much as this. They are 
conscious, like the publicans with whom our 
Lord consorted, that they are not as they 
ought to be, and that they need forgiveness. 
Perhaps the preachers of rehgion have not 
been enough alive to this. We have made 
the gate of pardon too strait: we have not 
trusted enough to the general working of the 
Holy Spirit in the heart of man. But in such 
an appeal as I have touched upon, of the 
Bible to the mass of mankind, there is no 
feature which is more sure of acceptance than 
such teaching as that of the parable of the 
returning prodigal, or of that of the mote and 
the beam which forbids harsh judgments. 
Here also is the open door for the entrance 
of the Gospel. These parables and the teach- 
ing to which they belong are not restricted to 



86 THE BIBLE 

the individual application : they belong also 
to the wider sphere of God's dealings. There 
are prodigal classes and prodigal nations. 
The publicans and the heathen were in the 
Saviour's mind ; and the message of the 
Bible to men in the future will be, like that 
of Elijah : " That this people may know that 
Thou art the Lord God, and that Thou hast 
turned their heart back again." 

4. The Bible, we have said, gives principles 
not rules, and thus it frees us from dogma- 
tism and formalism. It also prescribes neither 
method nor system, but only the spirit of 
mutual love. It leaves us free to adapt our 
principles freely to each successive stage of 
society. It is at home in a democracy as in 
a monarchy : it may be the inspirer of social 
movements of divers ages and stages, of 
trades' societies, of cooperative movements, 
of the higher socialism. But since the larger 
half of the Bible is the history of religion, not 
in a city like Athens, nor in an aggregate of 
cities like the Eoman Empire, but in a nation, 
it seems to have a special affinity to our 
time, in which nationality is the chosen form 
of political society. The history of Israel 
has a peculiar application to nations like those 



THE BIBLE 87 

of our time, the dangers of which come 
from the dividing of classes, from the idola- 
try of wealth, from the materialism which 
breeds coarseness and callousness. 

5. Lastly, the Bible is the book of hope. 
There is about us a pessimism which would 
be the death of social reform, a languid fatal- 
ism which when it sees decadence prepares at 
once to succumb to it. In a memorable work ^ 
on the future of national character written 
some ten years ago, we have the picture of a 
social state become flaccid and impotent, 
without interest in religion or politics, in lit- 
erature or art, in science or practical inven- 
tions. It seemed enough to the gifted author 
to see the dangers, and at once to undergo 
the fascination of the precipice. But the 
Bible works always towards the future, in the 
Old Testament to the reign of the Messiah, 
in the New to the kingdom of God and the 
New Jerusalem. We are at the beginning, 
not the end of human endeavor. The new 
knowledge and appliances and locomotion of 
our day are the commencement of a full entry 

^ National Life and Character, a Forecast, by Charles H. 
Pearson. Macmillans : 1893. 



88 THE BIBLE 

upon our inheritance : and the perception of 
the social problem and of its urgency is the 
pledge to those who have the Bible in their 
hands of its complete and happy solution. 



Ill 



THE SACRAMENTS 

So much has been made of the Sacraments, 
and so many disputes have arisen about them, 
that we are tempted to ask whether they 
really hold the paramount position which has 
been assigned to them in the system of Chris- 
tian Ordinances by nearly every age of the 
Church. That they have been at times over- 
valued is true : and that they have been the 
subject of superstition. It is important, there- 
fore, to observe that in our Lord's life and 
teaching they occupy quite a subordinate 
place — the supreme matter there is the spir- 
itual and moral life, and all ordinances are 
merely accessory; and also that in the Epis- 
tles the mention of them is mainly allusive: 
there is no exhortation to comply with them 
except so far as baptism is the corollary to 
repentance and faith : they are taken as a 
matter of course. We must recall also the 
fact that our Lord himself did not baptize. 



90 THE SACRAMENTS 

and that St. Paul, though occasionally baptiz- 
ing, placed this ordinance in a position of 
subordination to the proclamation of the Gos- 
pel : " Christ sent me not to baptize, but to 
preach the Gospel." He saw the danger of 
its being turned to sectarian purposes. And 
further, we must notice that, in our Lord's 
mouth, except in his last command, baptism 
is used entirely for a spiritual experience. 
" I have a baptism to be baptized with," He 
says of himself ; and to his disciples of the 
inner circle He puts the question, ^^Can ye 
drink of my cup and be baptized with the 
baptism that I am baptized with ? " And, 
moreover, that the contrast is drawn by John 
the Baptist, not between his outward immer- 
sion and another immersion of higher signifi- 
cance, but between his baptism as an outward 
thing and the baptism of our Lord as a 
wholly spiritual thing : " I baptize with water, 
but he that cometh after me shall baptize 
with fire and the Holy Ghost," words which 
were repeated by our Lord just before his 
ascension when the command to baptize was 
given. We must observe also that the last 
of the Evangelists records the words of our 
Lord to Nicodemus, which, if they have any 



THE SACRAMENTS 91 

allusion to the outward baptism, must be taken 
as merely touching upon it as the ordinary 
practice J and at once drawing his hearer's 
attention away from any thought of an ordi- 
nance to that of being born of the Spirit 
from above. And to pursue this further ; 
we may notice that St. John does not record 
the institution of either sacrament, though he 
dwells upon that which they signify : his 
report of our Lord's words about eating Him, 
or eating his flesh and drinking his blood, as 
synonymous with believing in Him, shows that 
the spiritual act and blessing is in no absolute 
manner dependent on the outward ordinance. 
We may therefore be thankful that there 
is a body of Christians distinguished for their 
Christian simplicity and their good works, 
who have altogether discarded the use of out- 
ward sacraments. To deny them the Chris- 
tian name and a place in the Christian 
Church would be to deny the Spirit of God. 
The Friends stand as a witness that the body 
of believers has complete power over the out- 
ward form. It is important to observe this, 
because there has been at times (and not least 
in our own time) a tendency to make the 
establishment of the sacraments the begin- 



92 THE SACRAMENTS 

ning of a new law of ordinances holding the 
same place in the Christian system which the 
ceremonial law held in the old dispensation. 
Circumcision, it was said, has been abrogated, 
but the new law of baptism has taken its 
place ; and, it is hinted, as circumcision car- 
ried with it the whole apparatus of Jewish 
ordinances, so baptism carries with it the 
whole system of Christian ordinances, which 
thus gains a character of obligation. I have 
read sermons in which the doctrine of justi- 
fication by faith was entirely confused by 
this supposition : and it is important that 
we should maintain the absolute character of 
faith and righteousness, the relative and sub- 
ordinate character of ordinances, even of the 
two sacraments. As a matter of fact the 
Church has used its liberty very largely, and 
each of the sacraments has undergone such 
changes in its outward form that they would 
not be recognized at all by those who at first 
were subject to them. And we cannot but 
maintain that there may be good reasons, such 
as the superstitious or sectarian employment 
of them, or the tyrannous conditions imposed 
upon participation, which would justify Chris- 
tian men in declining their use altogether. 



THE SACRAMENTS 93 

It is necessary to make this assertion of lib- 
erty ; but its result is only to show that no 
ordinance can be placed on a level with faith 
and righteousness as absolute and indispen- 
sable. The sacraments are part of the Church 
system and will always remain its central 
ordinances, the one guarding its portal, the 
others strengthening and supporting its whole 
fabric. But the freedom of their use and 
administration is essential for their bearing 
on social progress. I propose to touch first 
on the idea and meaning of sacraments gen- 
erally, secondly on baptism, thirdly on the 
Lord's Supper, showing in each case their 
social importance. 



It may be asked whether such symbols 
as the sacraments have not had their day. 
They abounded in the Jewish dispensation ; 
they abounded in the Middle Ages, and in 
each case they became a yoke which men 
were unable to bear. Are they not out of 
place in a modern and progressive era? Is 
not this the age of the spirit and the time for 
plain speaking ? Is not such plain speaking 
especially the need of the new democracy ? 



94 THE SACRAMENTS 

I would here draw your attention to a fact 
of the utmost importance, though often un- 
recognized, both in the sphere of worship and 
in that of life, on which I have said a few 
words in the first of these lectures. It is this, 
— that human nature is not merely rational 
and moved by appeals and arguments which 
are made by word of mouth. It is directed 
largely by instinct, which goes out into habit 
and is fed by habit in return ; which works by 
unconscious or half -conscious impulses ; which 
is fostered by training rather than by teach- 
ing ; which is increased by impressions from 
without more than by conscious thought. We 
all do many things, some of them of great 
importance, hardly asking why we do them. 
We eat or drink or seek social converse with- 
out giving a reason for it ; no one exerts a 
conscious act of reason in putting out his 
foot to walk. And, though this instinctive 
phase of life belongs largely to infancy and 
to immaturity, it remains with us more or less 
throughout life. And further, when we have 
reasoned out a matter, the truth which we 
have gained becomes a received principle, on 
which we act, but do not reason any more. 
Habit becomes an instinct, and the general 



THE SACRAMENTS 95 

habit or fashion sways us we hardly know 
why. The more we reflect on this^ the more 
we see that, in the larger part of our life, we 
are not merely voluntary and rational agents, 
but led by unconscious, instinctive impres- 
sions. Every true teacher and ruler in what- 
soever department must take account of this 
fact, otherwise he will go, and lead men, 
astray. Our Lord, then, while in his public 
teaching He constantly appeals to the reason- 
ing faculty, and bids men judge of themselves 
what is right, and take notice of the signs of 
the times, yet, in the institution of the Church 
and the sacraments, recognizes the other ele- 
ment, the unconscious or instinctive side of 
human nature, that in which we are subject 
to training, to habit, to social forces, to im- 
pressions. In our Christian worship both these 
elements have their part. All that belongs 
to ritual and ceremony, and the influence of 
form and color and sound, of architecture, 
painting, colored glass, or music, and to the 
associations and impressions to which these so 
powerfully minister, appeals to the instinc- 
tive part of us : on the other hand, the prayers 
in the vernacular language, the instructions 
and exhortations of the pulpit, appeal to the 



96 THE SACRAMENTS 

reasoning and conscious faculties. The East- 
ern churches trust almost entirely to the for- 
mer of these influences ; they have a grand 
sacramental ritual and beautiful music, but 
hardly any preaching ; the Church of Rome 
also mainly relies on these influences, as you 
may see at a Sunday mass, when a vast mass 
of ignorant people, not understanding a word 
of the Latin prayers, assist, and are conscious 
of a Divine presence, and go away awed and 
inspired ; and on its discipline, which also is 
a training rather than a mental process. The 
Protestant churches have relied, perhaps too 
exclusively, on the appeal to the conscious 
reason. 

As it is with worship, so it is with life ; and 
it is of the utmost importance to show that 
Christian institutions, as an element of the 
general life, are grounded on the principles 
and working of human nature, and are not 
things thrust in by authority into an uncon- 
genial environment. There are parts and 
times in our life in which we are dependent 
on reason and conscious effort ; but there are 
others in which unconscious habit and in- 
stinct hold the chief place. And this last 
is the case especially in all social matters. It 



THE SACRAMENTS 97 

is not by an act of will that men become 
Englishmen or Americans^ or, in many cases, 
inhabitants of our great cities. Even in their 
poKtical or religious connections they are 
often swayed much more than they know by 
associations, education, or social station. We 
are subject here to the influence of public 
opinion and of fashion, the origin of which 
we hardly know : we partake of the spirit of 
the society to which we belong, and live, to a 
great extent, with its Hfe rather than with 
any individual life of our own. Moreover, 
you find that throughout our lives signs have 
a great influence : they often mean more 
than words : they seem to concentrate a whole 
set of ideas or tendencies. The soldier's or 
the politician's flag fires him with enthusiasm : 
in it he sees concentrated the thought of 
country, of honor, of discipHne, of union, of 
some great cause to which he would rally his 
countrymen ; and its waving on high at the 
close of the contest is the signal of victory. 
And so it is in the more ordinary spheres of 
life. A shrug of the shoulders or a curl of 
the lip is often more expressive than a keen 
word of sarcasm or contempt. A kiss or a 
grasp of the hand touches us more than a 



98 THE SACRAMENTS 

statement of love or of good faith. Darwin 
has endeavored to trace some of these expres- 
sions of the emotions to their origin. But 
whether they can be thus traced or no, it 
is certain that to most of us their origin is 
unknown. They are signs, and nothing but 
signs, and yet they have a power beyond that 
of rational explanation. Moreover, when 
words fail us, it is a relief to do something 
which expresses our meaning. Words often 
confuse and sophisticate, when action is clear ; 
and the wise and well-known saying, that 
when we are in doubt the best thing we can 
do is to take the next step forward, constantly 
shows us the power of an external act over 
the mind. Human nature craves something 
which we can touch and see. In the social 
democracies of the future we may be sure 
that this principle will have even a greater 
force than before. Men move in masses : 
they march with bands and scarfs and ban- 
ners and badges. They love watchwords and 
party names as expressing their general adhe- 
sion. To sit down at a club feast or wear the 
distinctive dress of the society implies as much 
or more than a declaration of its principles. 
If therefore the Christian society is bound 



THE SACRAMENTS 99 

together by certain special signs^ not merely 
by reasoned principles, it is in this eminently 
human and eminently social ; and thus it 
shows itself well adapted to unite with, and 
to guide, those societies of the coming time 
which it desires to win for God. 

It must be added that the sacramental prin- 
ciple, that is, the representation of the inward 
idea by the outward sign or action, is one 
which is to be seen in activity throughout the 
world. The visible universe itself is the out- 
ward manifestation of God, the " living robe 
of the Godhead," as Goethe called it, the 
body of Christ if Christ be truly the Word of 
God. And in human life each sphere and each 
commodity is the emblem of some idea or feel- 
ing of the humanity from which it sprang. 
In the painting you see the soul of the artist, 
in literature the heart of the writer, in com- 
merce the enterprise of the merchant adven- 
turer or the mariner : a magnificent building 
is, as we say, a grand conception. The whole 
world is one great natural sacrament, " the 
outward visible sign of an inward spiritual 
grace." And in the Church system it is im- 
portant to go beyond the prescribed act, to 
realize the principle as far-reaching and uni- 
versal. L cf C. 



100 THE SACRAMENTS 

But, farther, the sacramental principle in 
the Christian Church has a more definite and 
a more social object. It is the means or the 
attestation of incorporation into the body of 
believers. This is the special inward and 
spiritual grace which our ordinances convey 
to us. I need not point out that this mem- 
bership in a body is that which the democratic 
development of society requires. The right 
of citizenship is not merely the right to cer- 
tain advantages, but the incorporation into 
the city or the nation, with the social stand- 
ing and dignity which it brings. Was not 
a justification sought for the claims which 
led to the recent war in South Africa by the 
demand that the resident workers should be 
members of the commonwealth and not Hel- 
ots ? St. Paul awakened a thrill in the Gen- 
tile converts of Ephesus when he said that 
they were fellow citizens with the Saints, 
members of the household of God, no longer 
strangers and foreigners. 

But, if the principle is so large a one, why, 
it may be asked, should we only recognize as 
sacraments the two acts of baptism and the 
Lord's Supper. It may be answered, as Au- 
gustine answered, that numerous ordinances 



THE SACRAMENTS 101 

become a burden. He says that the old cove- 
nant had many such signs, and that the wis- 
dom of our Saviour was shown in this, that 
He selected two simple rites, easy to be prac- 
ticed, as sufficient for all his followers. We 
might, indeed, extend the use of the word 
legitimately. The largest body of our fellow 
Christians recognize seven acts as sacraments. 
They all of them are outward signs of an in- 
ward spiritual grace, and they all are signs of 
incorporation into the society and its compo- 
nent parts. The Reformation put them aside 
because it felt it necessary to adhere to those 
signs which Christ himself had sanctioned : but 
still more, I think, because the seven sacra- 
ments were the centre of a burdensome mass 
of ordinances which, as Luther showed in his 
primary treatises on Christian hberty and the 
Church's captivity, had become an instrument 
of priestly tyranny, and, as Tyndale showed 
in his " Obedience of a Christian Man," had 
denaturahzed the ordinances themselves and 
overlaid human life with an unreal clericalism. 
But it would be quite wrong to deny to these 
other ordinances, and indeed to all the acts 
by which we endeavor to body forth to our- 
selves the unseen and eternal, some true sacra- 



102 THE SACRAMENTS 

mental meaning and efficacy. The two sac- 
raments are the centre of a Church system 
which is sacramental in all its parts. 

You wiU notice that both these sacraments 
are social acts. They imply the bond which 
unites the society^ the bond of attachment 
to Christ which is the ratio essendi of the 
society ; and also, as we must insist and reiter- 
ate, because it is being forgotten in the pre- 
sent day, and because on this depends their 
social efficacy, the bond which unites the 
members to one another. The sacraments, 
also, have rightly been called federal acts : 
they are the seal of a mutual treaty or under- 
standing, the prime assumption of the Chris- 
tian calling, by which Christ's servants recog- 
nize one another and pledge themselves mu- 
tually to continue his redemptive work. And 
this social destination of the sacraments must 
be of a piece with the large objects of the 
Christian Society itself. If the Church is, 
as has been maintained, an expansive society, 
tending to embrace the whole of mankind, 
then the Sacraments must be held to incor- 
porate us into this expansive body, and to 
pledge us, not merely to brotherly relations 
with a larger or smaller body of fellow-mys- 



THE SACRAMENTS 103 

tics, partakers of a treasure unknown to 
others, but to work with them for the larger 
society which is passing more and more into 
the Christian state, that is, for the social 
regeneration of mankind. This is what St. 
Paul spoke of as the fellowship of the mys- 
tery, which Christians are to make all men 
know. 

Next, we observe that the two sacraments 
are not in the proper sense acts of worship, 
though they are often called so. To im- 
merse a person in water or sprinkle him with 
it is not prayer ; nor is the drinking of wine 
and eating of bread. These are actions 
which have gained a religious significance 
from the remembrance of our Saviour and 
from the special meaning He gave to them, 
and from the fact that they are the means of 
introducing us into the company of those who 
are united to Him, or maintaining us in it. 
They are, and usually have been, though not 
universally, accompanied by prayer : they in- 
volve the deepest reverence for Christ, who 
lives and acts in the Church as his own body. 
But they belong to the domain of action 
rather than of prayer. They are ordinances 
of the Christian life. 



104 THE SACRAMENTS 

The word sacrament itself is of mixed 
import. It is used by the Latin Fathers in 
a very general sense. All the symbols and 
sacrifices of the Old Testament are with them 
sacraments ; and, as I have mentioned, Au- 
gustine calls attention to the wisdom of our 
Lord in selecting two simple acts out of the 
mass of rites which existed in the Jewish 
Church. But they extend the meaning of 
the word still further ; any strong expression 
of Scripture is spoken of by Jerome as a sac- 
rament, and so is any solemn word which 
conveys a deep spiritual impression. In his 
Vulgate translation of the New Testament, 
we have such expressions as " The sacrament 
of the seven stars which thou sawest in my 
right hand" (Rev. i. 20), or "The Sacra- 
ment of the woman and of the beast which 
carrieth her" (Rev. xvii. 7), or 1 Tim. iii. 
16, " Great is the sacrament of godliness," or 
Eph. V. 22, of marriage, " This is a great 
sacrament." But where we first meet with 
the word in history, in Pliny's letter to Tra- 
jan about the Christians, it is applied to the 
Lord's Supper taken as a solemn social adju- 
ration. To the Roman it meant the mihtary 
oath which each soldier took, on enlisting, to 



THE SACRAMENTS 105 

his commander : and the description given 
of it by Phny shows that he understood it 
as being a solemn pledge by which Christian 
votaries bound themselves to him and to one 
another. This we may take to be the sense 
in which the Church itself conceived of it: 
and we see at once its vast social importance. 
As the Roman soldier pledged himself to serve 
his commander, the representative of the im- 
perial majesty, and to support his comrades 
in this service, so the servant of Christ pledges 
himself to be faithful to his Lord, to render 
loyal obedience, to submit to discipline, to aid 
his fellow-workers in the cause of Christ, to 
war against his enemies, and to bring in his 
kingdom. 

II 

Let us now apply these general statements 
to the sacrament of baptism. It is first a 
washing or cleansing, representing that the 
person baptized has been cleansed from sin ; 
secondly, a symbol of death and resurrection, 
denoting that the baptized person has for- 
saken utterly his former evil state, and has 
risen again to a new and better life; and 
thirdly, an incorporation into Christ and his 
body the Church. 



106 THE SACRAMENTS 

We speak of baptism as instituted or or- 
dained by Christ. But it would be more 
proper to say that it was appropriated by him 
and received his special stamp. For it was 
well known before the time of Christ, just as 
circumcision was practiced by many nations 
and only adopted by the Israelites as a sign 
of the covenant ; or as the rainbow, which has 
existed since first the rays of light were re- 
fracted from the raindrops, was appropriated 
as an emblem of God's promise. The Jews 
indeed did not baptize their children, because 
they held that the nation had been baptized 
as a whole in the solemn washing recorded 
in Exodus xix. 14, before the giving of the 
law ; and that the children of a baptized 
family did not need this means of incorpora- 
tion. But when a proselyte desired admis- 
sion he was baptized : and baptism became 
also the means of admission into any of the 
sects which sought to renew the spiritual life 
of Israel. The Essenes, in their over-wrought 
efforts for ceremonial purity, were baptized 
again and again. Each day, about eleven 
o'clock, after their work, they solemnly joined 
together in a sacred bath, after which, clad in 
white robes, they entered the refectory with 



THE SACRAMENTS 107 

great solemnity to partake of the common 
meal. And the point of John's baptism was 
that he called upon the whole nation to accept 
it. It was vain for them to appeal to their 
forefathers. The nation had become apostate, 
and every member of it needed regeneration 
and reincorporation into the community of 
the people of God. Our Lord's disciples began 
the same practice, with their Master's sanction, 
though He, significantly, did not baptize, 
and though we do not read of the Apostles 
being baptized nor of our Lord enjoining 
baptism upon those whom He called to fol- 
low Him. When, therefore, we read that our 
Lord, just before his final departure, bade his 
followers go and make disciples of all nations 
and baptize them, we must not think of this 
as the invention of some new thing, but 
rather of its adaptation to new circumstances. 
The vast extension of the Church which was 
contemplated demanded a new social bond. 
That of Israel, the ceremonies of the law, was 
no longer available, — we see that the at- 
tempt to enforce it in the time of St. Paul 
was found impossible : and baptism was made 
universal and charged with a new significance. 
We must take our Lord's saying not as 



108 THE SACRAMENTS 

meaning, " I institute a new ordinance," but 
" Use the old ordinance, not for Israel only, 
but for all nations, and use it as expressing 
the universal name and character of God — 
no longer Jehovah of Hosts, but Father and 
Son and Holy Ghost." 

If we dwell for a moment on the words of 
Christ, we shall see how they assist us in pre- 
senting the acceptance of Christianity as the 
great social regeneration. 

1. Those baptized are to be made disci- 
ples, and to be a disciple is to be a subject 
of the kingdom : '' Thou sayest that I am a 
king — I came to bear witness for the truth ; 
he that is of the truth heareth my voice " — 
that is, becomes my spiritual subject. We 
have here incorporation into a kingdom. 
This has been called the enlightenment or 
the regeneration : and though these words 
may not be desirable ones to use for many 
reasons, yet this is true of Christian disciple- 
ship, that it changes the moral basis or pri- 
mary assumptions of a man's life. The man 
who accepts Christ as his master and teacher 
necessarily refers to Him as the standard of 
judgment; by Him the ordinary standard, 
which is that of selfishness in one of its many 



THE SACRAMENTS 109 

forms, has been forsaken ; and instead of this 
Christ's teaching of universal, self-renouncing 
love has been accepted. He has joined a 
society, and the primary assumption of that 
society is that its members live to seek the 
kingdom and righteousness of God, that is, 
to promote social good in their master's 
name. 

2. The command is to baptize all nations : 
and this implies in the first place that the 
society is universal — it comprehends not the 
Jews only, but mankind : and, as we may 
apply it, all classes and races — it is the 
Church of humanity. But must we not say 
also that it implies, not individuals only, but 
communities? If it is true, as I have endea- 
vored to maintain, that there is what may be 
called a " mind of the community " which con- 
stitutes the primary moral assumption in the 
minds of the individuals who compose it, is it 
not possible that the community should change 
its mind, and is there not a repentance for 
bodies of men as well as for individuals? 
Who can deny this who has witnessed great 
revulsions of popular feeling or read of them in 
history, such as that at the time of the Refor- 
mation, when nations revolted from the mediae- 



110 THE SACRAMENTS 

val system, or that o£ Japan in its embrace 
of Western civilization ? It is to be observed 
also that the Gospel was first offered to the 
Jews as a nation : " Ye are the children of 
the prophets, and of the covenant which God 
made with Abraham.'' And in St. Paul's 
preaching, not individuals only, but families 
were brought in and baptized. The promise 
was not " Believe on the Lord Jesus Christ, 
and thou shalt be saved," but " thou shalt be 
saved, and thy houseJ^ The children and 
slaves of the family were willing to go with 
the master, and they were received and bap- 
tized and became the family church. Perhaps 
we may not be bound to condemn the action 
of our Saxon forefathers when, under the 
preaching of Augustine of Canterbury, 10,000 
Saxons are said to have been baptized in the 
Swale in a single day. Perhaps the conver- 
sion of India or China, or the desired altera- 
tion of the attitude of the masses in the West, 
may be upon a similar scale. 

3. I have touched upon the threefold 
name in which Christian baptism was to be 
bestowed. But name implies character. We 
must therefore understand it, not in a kind 
of mythological sense, but in the sense of 



THE SACRAMENTS 111 

moral relations. God is Father and Son and 
Holy Spirit all in one. The first is the guar- 
antee for the unity of the human family 
under a power beneficent and fatherly; the 
second is the guarantee of family affection 
through Him who gave Himself up for men ; 
the third gives the character of holiness and 
spirituality which must be the aim of every 
worthy society. 

4. There is no form presented; baptism 
may be by immersion or by sprinkling, of 
children or adults, by specially chosen minis- 
ters or by any member of the community, 
with prayer or by the simple act. For bap- 
tism is the witness of a universal obligation. 
It is the witness that men are coming to 
recognize what they ought to be. This in- 
clusiveness is wanted greatly in the present 
day ; and it is especially wanted for social 
progress. There is nothing which hinders 
that progress, or weakens those who promote 
it, so much as our divisions, in which we 
acquiesce much too readily. If baptism can 
be, not the admission to a sect, not a thing 
which has a bar on each side, to shut us out 
unless we can pronounce the catchword, and 
to shut us in from all communion with those 



112 THE SACRAMENTS 

who do not pronounce it, but an open door 
where we can go in and out freely, it may- 
lead to the union of all true men in one soci- 
ety of mutual well-doing. Let us endeavor 
to see how this may come about. 

(1.) We have said that baptism is the 
sacrament of incorporation. All those who 
receive it are one body, bound to each other 
by ties of mutual obligation. This bond is 
essentially democratic, and even in the best 
sense socialistic, for it certainly demands 
that equality which is the essence of demo- 
cracy ; and it includes the socialist maxim, so 
far as any meaning can be given to it : 
" From each according to his capacity, to 
each according to his need." The method of 
enforcing this maxim is not compulsory, as 
with socialism : yet in a large community law 
and taxation can only be voluntary in the sense 
that each citizen votes freely : and law and 
taxation must come in to give effect to social 
reform. If our contention is true, that human 
nature is half unconscious and instinctive in 
its action, then it is impossible that progress 
should depend wholly on the action of indi- 
vidual on individual. The poorest classes 
who are massed in our towns are those whose 



THE SACRAMENTS 113 

individuality is least free ; they are and must 
be largely dependent on the action o£ the 
community. Many of these never have had 
a chance in life; political economists, like 
Eicardo, have confessed that, on their prin- 
ciples, the lower class of workers never can 
rise, that their wages will always be reckoned 
by that which will barely support existence. 
Some help or effort on the part of the com- 
munity into which they are incorporated is 
needed to give them a dead lift, and help 
them to that which has been called by Kidd 
^' an equality of opportunity." It is this which 
the better and more moderate socialism seeks 
to accomplish : the poorer and weaker class 
in our brotherhood have a claim on us for it : 
and those who are more independent in their 
circumstances should feel on their side the 
obligation which their incorporation implies, 
to seek out and give effect to the means by 
which it may be accomplished, at whatever 
sacrifice to themselves. 

(2.) The dedication to Christ which baptism 
implies is a dedication to holiness of life. 
"^ As many of you as are baptized into Christ 
have put on Christ." What follows, then, 
upon this? Not an unearthly kind of life, 



114 THE SACRAMENTS 

such as is attained by a few cloistered souls, 
and from which plain humanity revolts as 
being unnatural and impossible; not an ex- 
otic plant " too bright or good for human 
nature's daily food ; " but the life of bro- 
therly equality and mutual succor, " where 
there is neither Jew nor Greek, bond nor free, 
but Christ is all and in all." To grow into 
the image of Christ is to become like to One 
who went about doing good, who proclaimed 
a kingdom of brotherly beneficence, who ful- 
filled the law, that is, the law of social rela- 
tions, the law which succored the poor and 
needy, the fatherless and the widow. The 
holiness of the Gospel is not a lonely, other- 
world piety, but union in the spirit of Him 
who, as he described Himself, came eating and 
drinking, mixing with the common cares and 
joys of common men, healing men and supply- 
ing their bodily wants so as to lift them up, 
body and soul together, and to make them 
partakers both of the temporal and of the 
spiritual bounty of God. The Christ into 
whom we are baptized is the great inspirer of 
social reform. 

(3.) Baptism is the sacrament of cleansing. 
It is usual to say : the outward cleansing of 



THE SACRAMENTS 115 

the flesh is the type of the inward cleansing 
of the soul. But the reverse process is also 
true. The clean soul demands clean surround- 
ings. Cleanliness follows upon godliness. 
^^Draw near/' says the Epistle to the He- 
brewsj ^* having your hearts sprinkled from 
an evil conscience, and your bodies washed 
with pure water." One of the greatest re- 
quirements of our day is sanitation. We 
want clean bodies, clean homes, clean streets, 
and the baths and washhouses and fountains 
and good drainage by which these are se- 
cured : these better conditions of Hfe are the 
proper accompaniments of the clean heart 
which we ask God to create in us, and they 
greatly aid in its preservation. The public 
health is a part of the social advance which 
is the task of the Church of our day. 

Ill 

I turn now to the other sacrament, that of 
the Lord's Supper : and I venture to say that 
the first thought which its name ought to 
excite in us is that it is a federal act, bind- 
ing together the head and the members in 
one community ; for it presents to us a com- 
mon meal, a loving fellowship, which carries 



lia THE SACRAMENTS 

US back to those twelve men gathered to- 
gether in the upper room, " with hearts/' 
according to the touching words of Carlyle, 
'^ God-initiated into a divine depth of sor- 
row ; '' — sorrow which was nevertheless to 
be turned into joy, and the feast to become 
an Eucharist. " We are assured by it/' says 
a prayer familiar to some of us, " that we 
are very members incorporate in the mystical 
body of Thy Son, which is the blessed com- 
pany of all faithful people." I venture to 
say that this social side of the Lord's Sup- 
per is its chief intention. It has been lost 
sight of in a great measure, and needs a 
clear light to rediscover and restore it. I 
also venture to say that it is an abuse of 
this ordinance where it is made the instru- 
ment of an esoteric and individualistic pietism, 
where each man asks, " What good shall I get 
from it for my own soul?" and where it is 
received again and again by small knots of 
leisurely worshipers with little thought of the 
general good, in ways and at times in which 
it is quite impossible that the mass of their 
fellow-men should join with them. The 
Lord's Supper, beyond all other ordinances, 
ought to aid in the furtherance of that social 



THE SACRAMENTS 117 

Christianity which is the great need of our 
time. 

Let me first call attention to the ideas 
which were held of it in the early, formative 
periods of the Church, as shown by the names 
by which it was designated. They all reflect 
its social purpose. 

First, it is the Lord's Supper, the meal of 
the family of which Christ is the head. It 
was a perpetuation of the Paschal meal, only 
converted to Christian uses. At the Passover 
the head of the family gathered all its mem- 
bers together: not one was to be absent. 
The paschal lamb, the unleavened bread, the 
bitter herbs, the apparatus for a journey, all 
reminded them of the Exodus : and the father 
rehearsed the story of the deliverance of their 
nation from the bondage of Egypt. Our 
Lord, in like manner, gathered the Twelve as 
making up his family, and with them cele- 
brated that Passover which with desire He had 
desired to eat with them before He suffered. 
At its close He gave it a special significance 
as the means of keeping Him in remembrance. 
He changed it from being a Jewish feast in 
memorial of the deliverance of the nation into 
a universal feast in memory of his death, 



118 THE SACRAMENTS 

which was the salvation of the world. But 
He by no means intended to alter its charac- 
ter as a social meal ; and for a long time it 
retained the name and the character of the 
paschal feast. 

This is brought out plainly in the passages in 
1 Cor. X. and xi. in which St. Paul deals with 
the Lord's Supper. In the first of these he 
says : " The bread which we break, is it not 
the communion of (that is, the partaking in 
common, or sharing in) the body of Christ ? 
And this body of Christ is not merely the 
mystic body of the personal Saviour : it is 
specifically the body of believers, of which 
He is the soul, and in which we have a share : 
" for," he says, " we, being many, are one 
body," hke the loaf which is divided between 
us all. And where, in the second of these 
passages, he deals with the abuses in the cele- 
bration of the ordinance at Corinth, the chief 
point of his blame relates to this, that these 
abuses destroyed it as a communion. " This 
is not," he exclaims, "to eat the Lord's 
Supper ! " Each of you takes before the 
rest his own supper ; the rich shame the 
poor ; you do not tarry the one for the other, 
as you would if the social obligation were pre- 



THE SACRAMENTS 119 

sent with you. Instead of the spectacle o£ 
communion, there was the spectacle of indi- 
vidual selfishness. What the Apostle desired 
was that all the Corinthian Christians, of 
all classes, should be together, and all on an 
equality. It was to be a social and a demo- 
cratic meal. 

Take next the name of Eucharist, and the 
idea conveyed by it, that of thanksgiving. 
This also was closely connected with the meal 
with which it originated. There, it is re- 
corded, our Lord took bread and gave thanks 
(cuxaptorrryo-as) ; and this giviug of thanks com- 
municated its spirit to the whole meal and 
gave it its name. The refreshment of the 
body aided that of the spirit, and the mind 
ranged over all the mercies of God, tem- 
poral and spiritual, which were centred in 
and consummated by the " unspeakable gift " 
of Christ. But the joy of a meal is not solely 
in the eating and drinking, but in its social 
character. The full idea of the eucharist is 
that of a company of men, redeemed in body 
and soul, blessing God together, and thank- 
ing Him in common for all his mercies, 
which they acknowledge as springing from 
the death and resurrection of their Lord. 



120 THE SACRAMENTS 

Next, we have the idea and name of Sacra- 
ment, which is specially attached by custom 
to the Lord's Supper. It may be well to 
quote the words o£ Pliny, to which I have 
alluded in speaking of the sacramental idea 
generally. The Christians, he says, " bound 
themselves by a sacrament " (a military oath) 
'' not to commit thefts, robbery, or adultery, 
not to break faith, or refuse to give up a 
deposit intrusted to them. Then, after sepa- 
rating for a time, they came together again 
and partook of food, of a common and in- 
nocent kind.'' We see in the scene thus 
described all the characteristics of a holy 
society : they meet at a meal, and with all 
the happy accompaniments of, a meal; but 
they have previously bound themselves by a 
solemn pledge, which they take in common, 
that they will together observe the great 
principles of morality, which constitute the 
law of God. 

In the Greek of the early Church the com- 
mon name for the ordinance was the Synaxis, 
that is, ihe gathering together, which shows 
how prominent was the idea of social union. 
In the letters of Constantino it is called the 
Synod, the coming together. In the Latin it 



THE SACRAMENTS 121 

was similarly called the CoUecta, which has the 
same meaning : and the word collect applied 
to certain prayers means the prayer which 
was used at this collecta or gathering. 

In later times the ordinance came to be 
known as the Mass ; and this name is asso- 
ciated in the minds of Protestants with many 
superstitious ideas which gathered round it in 
the Middle Ages. But there is good reason 
to beUeve that even in this name we have the 
social idea of the Lord's Supper before us. 
It seems most probable that the word comes 
from Missus, the Koman name for a course at 
a meal, the same name which we are famihar 
with when we speak of the officers' mess. 

But the name of Communion, which came 
out most definitely at the Kef ormation, brings 
the social spirit of the sacrament most fully 
before us. We are joined first to one an- 
other as a society, then to Christ as the head 
of the society, then to the spirit and the en- 
terprise for which the society exists. And 
the name, as used in the New Testament, sug- 
gests the imparting to others, that is, not 
merely the making of gifts to the poor, but 
the giving of all that is best in us, so far 
as is consistent with the maintenance of an 



122 THE SACRAMENTS 

individuality, to the work and cause o£ our 
Master. 

Let me here advert to an idea which has 
become very prominent in theological writings 
of late years, that which dwells on the Lord's 
Supper as a continuation of the incarnation. 
As the Word of God was incarnate in the 
person of Christ, so he is incarnate in the 
body of believers who are fed by his mysti- 
cal body and blood. I think we may accept 
this with much profit, if only we rise to its 
spiritual and universal meaning. We are not 
to confine the eating of the body and drink- 
ing the blood of the Lord to this one ordi- 
nance. They were explained by many of the 
old Church writers as meaning that, as our 
Lord's human body was nourished by the 
common food, the bread and wine, so we, in 
partaking of the common food, are partakers 
of the same elements which form the sub- 
stance of his body. If this seems hardly ade- 
quate, we may nevertheless reach almost the 
same conclusion by following the Gospel of 
St. John. There our Lord uses the same 
words of eating his flesh and drinking his 
blood, but with lio allusion to the Lord's Sup- 
per, which was not instituted till a year later. 



THE SACRAMENTS 123 

No such allusion could have had any meaning 
to those whom he was addressing. He ex- 
plains them clearly as relating to the faith 
which spiritually appropriates him. '' Verily 
I say unto you, he that believeth on me hath 
everlasting life. I am that bread of Hfe.'' 
^' He that eateth me, even he shall live by 
me." And this appropriation of himself He 
makes the universal condition of moral life. 
^^ Verily I say unto you, except ye eat the 
flesh of the Son of Man and drink his blood, 
ye have no life in you." When you consider 
that these words were spoken by Him who 
was the Word of God, without whom nothing 
was made, by whom, as St. Paul says, all 
things consist, or rather in whom all things 
stand fast, it is impossible to confine them 
merely to the sacrament, unless we are to 
maintain that none but Christian communi- 
cants have any moral goodness, which would 
practically deny all morality and cut away the 
moral ground of Christianity itself. There 
is a well known declaration of the Church of 
England, which bids its ministers assure sick 
persons who are prevented from receiving the 
sacrament that in the exercise of faith they 
eat Christ's body and drink his blood profit- 



124 THE SACRAMENTS 

ably to their soul's health, though they do 
not receive the sacrament with their mouth ; 
and this is but the echo of the ancient and 
well-known words : " Crede et manducasti." 
A believer is always feeding on the bread of 
life. We may believe that our Lord intended 
the sacramental feast to be the centre round 
which should be grouped the manifold pro- 
cesses which bring us into union with Him. 
But, whether with processes or without them, 
the living union with Him is the thing of 
main importance. To dwell in Him as He 
dwells in us, to be joined with Him, body and 
spirit, to feel the throb and impulse of his life 
working through and through our own, to 
realize, in words which, whether or not they are 
genuine parts of Scripture, express exactly 
the scriptural idea that " we are members of 
his body, of his flesh, and of his bones," — 
this is what is meant by eating and drinking 
Him. 

And this cannot be confined to the advan- 
tage which each of us individually may re- 
ceive from the communion. The spirit of 
Christ is philanthropic and social, and, if He 
dwells in us. He fills us with social love and 
beneficence. He is the life of men, and the 



THE SACRAMENTS 125 

light of the world. And in the passage in 
which He speaks of eating and drinking Him, 
He says : " The bread that I will give is my 
flesh, which I will give for the life of the 
worldJ^ The extension of the incarnation 
must therefore mean to us not exclusively 
the union of select souls with the historic 
Christ in the sacrament, but, by all the means 
we have at hand, or without means at all, the 
realizing and embodying of his spirit in the 
nobler life of mankind. 

The same large, social spirit as being that 
of the Holy Communion will appear if we 
glance at the history of the ordinance. 

It was first a family feast, as the Passover 
had been. We read in Acts ii. 46, that, 
while the common prayers were held in the 
Temple, the communion was in the family — 
" breaking bread at home ; " and this appears 
to have continued, in some places at least, for 
two or three centuries. Clement of Alexan- 
dria says that on Sundays the sacrament was 
held in the church, but on other days in the 
separate houses, where it evidently was pre- 
sided over by the head of the family. In 
many places the Church sprang out of the 
family, as at Philippi from the household of 



126 THE SACRAMENTS 

Lydia; with which we may connect the ex- 
pression, " The church which is in thy house." 
As there were no church buildings for the 
first two centuries, there would be no marked 
distinction between the family feast and that 
which would unite a larger nimiber. So at 
Corinth and at Troas (1 Cor. xi. and Acts xx.) 
we find assemblies for the Lord's Supper 
which probably drew together, at least on 
special occasions, all the believers in the place, 
accompanied, in the one case, by ordinary 
social intercourse, in the other, by a speech 
(if we may adapt a modern social phrase) 
from the guest of the evening. We may 
imagine that, on such occasions, besides ordi- 
nary social intercourse, much would be said 
about the questions which agitated the little 
society, such as those discussed by St. Paul 
in the first Epistle to the Corinthians ; and 
that, at Troas, where St. Paul was known to 
be going on a perilous enterprise, he would 
address them much in the way in which he 
spoke at Miletus to the Ephesian elders. It 
would be unnatural also to think that they 
parted without prayer. But nothing is said 
of prayer. The impression is that of a 
solemn farewell meal. 



THE SACRAMENTS 127 

In the document known as the Didache, 
the date of which is probably very early in 
the second century, the sacrament is still 
simply a solemn meal. It is called the eu- 
charist or thanksgiving, and in this is not dis- 
tinguished from thanksgiving generally or 
from the meals of Christians. The prophets 
and apostles there spoken of, who were men 
raised above the rest, not by a special selection 
but by their spiritual capacity, preside ; and 
they may order a feast for any special occa- 
sion. At such a feast they are to give any 
advice that may be in their minds as to 
"righteousness and the knowledge of the 
Lord ; " but also, as may be inferred, as to the 
common affairs of Hfe ("the mystery of this 
world") so far as they affect the Church. 
And in the feast itself the union of believers 
is the chief thing dwelt upon. The " grace " 
or " prayer of consecration " consists of a 
thanksgiving to God for the knowledge He 
has given through his servant Jesus, and asks 
that, as the grains of wheat which were be- 
fore dispersed on the mountains have been 
gathered into this loaf, so it would please God 
to gather his Church out of all parts of the 
world, and to bring them into the fellowship 
of his kingdom. 



128 THE SACRAMENTS 

We hardly realize, I think, how much this 
fellowship of the kingdom was aided and 
made real by these common meals in which 
the poor were specially considered : nor how 
great a part was played by the gifts which 
we now speak of as the offertory or collec- 
tion. It would hardly be too much to say 
that the presentation of gifts and their con- 
sumption was in itself the communion. The 
word which we translate communion means 
also in Greek an imparting, and those two 
meanings seem to be blended in the expres- 
sion " fellowship/' as where it is said that the 
converts at Pentecost abode in the apostles' 
teaching and fellowship. They are certainly 
blended in the communion of the early cen- 
turies. Lists of the congregation were kept 
on diptychs or folded boards, and these were 
read out at the very centre of the ordinance. 
This proceeding formed so large a part of 
the business that in many of the old liturgies^ 
we have prayers entitled " Before the Names " 
and " After the Names." The prayers, post 
nominay ask in some cases that God will be 
pleased to bless those whose names have been 

^ See Gallican Liturgies (Forbes and Neale), esp. pp. 2, 
54, and 104. 



THE SACRAMENTS 129 

rehearsed, and to convert their offerings into 
a divine sacrifice — a very significative phrase. 
The names of the departed were not struck 
off, and offerings were made in the name of 
those at rest (pausantium). As each name 
was read out, the bearer of it advanced and 
laid his gift on the Lord's table, usually in 
kind, till it was heaped high with loaves and 
flagons and offerings of all kinds : then a 
part of this mass of gifts was consumed in 
the church itself, and the rest was accounted 
for by the deacons or carried to the sick and 
poor members in their own homes. 

It was only in course of time that a portion 
was severed from the rest to be specially con- 
secrated : and it would seem that this led to the 
formation of an inner circle of communicants. 
One of the church writers at the time when 
this took place urges that this should not be 
held to deprive the ordinary members of all 
part in the sacred feast, but that some small 
cakes at least should be distributed among 
them. And it is remarkable that this cus- 
tom is still observed in many parts of France, 
where, though only the priest and a very 
small number of the people actually com- 
municate, small cakes and rolls are passed 



130 THE SACRAMENTS 

round to the general congregation under the 
title of "pain heniy^ or blessed bread. But 
in the earlier days all alike was holy ; the rich 
and poor had a common meal, and body and 
soul were refreshed together. It is easy to 
see how greatly this aided both the Christian 
sociality and the discipHne of the community. 
It was a meal which gladdened all, and united 
them in a fellowship of thankfulness and 
beneficence. To be excluded from it was 
to be cut off at once from the society of 
friends with whom a man's life was bound up, 
from the substantial meal, and from the bene- 
fits of the constantly increasing funds of the 
society. 

This social element of the sacrament was 
by degrees set aside. It was impossible to 
maintain it in the form I have just described. 
The gifts were exchanged for money : there 
were many other sources of relief for the 
poor : governments which became Christian 
undertook the work of discipline, and church 
penitentiaries gave place to law. The sacra- 
ment became more and more a service of 
prayer and praise. Then, being cut off from 
common life, its words and forms became de- 
naturalized: superstition took the place left 



THE SACRAMENTS 131 

vacant by utility ; till at last a kind of magi- 
cal virtue alone remained as the benefit of the 
sacrament : the communion table became an 
altar, the chancels were enormously length- 
ened, and the common people treated more 
and more as a herd unworthy even to gaze 
on the sacred mysteries ; and instead of a 
common feast of love there was a vicarious 
sacrifice conducted by the priest on behalf of 
the people. 

From this degradation the sacrament was 
in part extricated at the Eeformation. In 
England especially the homilies then pub- 
lished exhorted men to come and feed them- 
selves, and to come all together : the exhor- 
tations in the public service laid stress on 
this element ; and the ministers were forbid- 
den to celebrate the eucharist unless a cer- 
tain number were present : even in a parish 
of twenty people there was to be no com- 
munion unless four or at least three came to 
communicate with the minister : even in illness 
two at least must be with the sick person. 
But the tendency of late years, it is to be 
feared, has been backward rather than for- 
ward ; and in some of our churches the social 
element of the communion has been almost 
suppressed. 



132 THE SACRAMENTS 

Can it be restored? Can the ordinance 
become really a communion again ? Can it be 
made influential in the general life of the 
Church, so as to aid in the great social up- 
lifting which is the task before the Church 
of our day? It seems evident that if this 
cannot be done, we shall drift into a state of 
things in which it will have only a kind of 
formal or magical value to those who attend 
it, hardly touching the reason or the con- 
science, while by the great mass of the people 
it will be (I fear it must be said it has been) 
deserted, as having no bearing on the life of 
the community. It is, no doubt, impossible 
to restore such scenes as I have described as 
existing in the early Church. But much may 
be done, first, by giving a more social direc- 
tion to the present mode of conducting our 
communion services ; and secondly, by asso- 
ciating with the central act of communion 
the social acts of common life. 

1. The communion is the assertion of the 
Church's unity, the gathering, as we have 
seen that it was called in early days. The 
effort should be made to realize this union. 
A few communions, carefully prepared for, 
and uniting the people together, are much 



THE SACRAMENTS 133 

more wholesome than very frequent attend- 
ances of a few leisurely persons^ usually 
women, at what is miscalled a celebration, 
(for this word implies a full company of assist- 
ants,) and is more like the meeting of a private 
coterie. In the Scotch country parishes many 
days are given to preparatory exercises : it is 
a disgrace not to hold a token and to attend ; 
and the whole body comes together, realizing 
before God their union in faith and the as- 
piration towards holiness. It may be that 
there are reasons why such gatherings should 
not be the only opportunity of communion, 
but some effort should be made, at least on 
occasions, to renew the general gathering. 
And let those who live and work together 
make the sacrament a bond to sanctify their 
common life. If we have guilds or societies 
for special objects, let every member make it 
a duty to attend the corporate communion. 
Let families especially, as much as possible, 
make it a social bond, not coming one at one 
time, another at another, but parents and chil- 
dren, masters and servants, together, renewing 
the paschal family meal of both Jewish and 
Christian times. And for this purpose we 
must freely adapt our arrangements to the 



134 THE SACRAMENTS 

actual needs of men, not making fictitious 
rules like that of fasting communion, or for- 
bidding its celebration in the evening when 
the working people can most readily come, 
but acting in the spirit of our Lord's great 
principle that the Sabbath is made for man, 
not man for the Sabbath. 

2. We must enlarge the application of 
the communion. Our sacraments in Church 
should be the centre of an influence which vivi- 
fies and sanctifies our common life. " Whether 
ye eat or drink, or whatever ye do, do all to 
the glory of God." It was a secular author, 
Charles Dickens, who said that our meals 
should be social sacraments, and I think, if 
this were admitted, our grace at meal-times, 
instead of being a muttered formality, would 
partake of the eucharistic character. It would 
be not only a thanksgiving for what we eat 
and drink, but a realizing of the presence of 
our Lord, a help to incorporation into Him, 
a hallowing of our social intercourse, and of 
the whole life, of which our meals are the 
material centre. We should realize the motto 
which originated in Germany : " Christ is the 
Lord of this house, the guest of every meal, 
the unseen hearer of every conversation.'' 



THE SACRAMENTS 135 

If this spirit can be made to pervade the 
life of our Christian worshipers, and they 
can be banded together, as they were meant 
to be by the Lord's Supper, the spirit of the 
sacrament would extend itself throughout 
society. The meetings which are held not 
only for religious societies but for all which 
makes up a noble Christian life, for purposes 
of art, knowledge, inventions, would gain a 
reality beyond that which they have when 
undertaken merely for convenience or for 
gain. If bread and wine can represent the 
divine life, why not color or crucibles, or en- 
gines or ships? Do they not all minister 
to a life such as God has ordained for us — 
such as Christ has redeemed? Do we not 
believe that in Christ as the Word they all 
were made, whether we think of the material 
or of the genius which is in them, and that 
Christ, as man enthroned, is Lord over their 
final destination ? And in the general life of 
mankind, social and poHtical, the sacramental 
analogy is close : for we know that we are 
meant to be all one brotherhood. In the 
great outburst of fraternity which accompanied 
the first French Eevolution it was customary 
to see in the streets of Paris long tables 



136 THE SACRAMENTS 

erected, with abundant though simple food, 
at which all classes sat down together. It 
was a short-lived enthusiasm, and had no 
adequate moral basis. But that basis we can 
supply. The object of Christian Endeavorers 
is a society grounded on Christ's self-sacrific- 
ing love, and using all the products of the 
wodd for its divine purpose. To the banquet 
of that nobler life are called, not the strong 
and the wealthy alone, but the maim, the halt, 
and the blind, the outcasts of our humanity. 
Let the sacramental feasts of early Christian- 
ity furnish the type and the assurance of that 
fuller banquet which God, we trust, will yet 
provide through our efforts for the enjoyment 
and the strengthening of all his family. 



IV 

CREEDS AND CONFESSIONS OF FAITH 

In the past lectures I have shown the 
bearing of the system of Christian ordinances 
on social progress in reference to the system 
itself, to the Bible, and to the sacraments. 
I have to show the same to-day in reference 
to creeds and confessions of belief. In the 
older church systems the creeds form part of 
the services and are recited aloud by all the 
worshipers. In all or almost all bodies of 
Christians, some statement of belief exists 
which all are supposed to recognize, and to 
which an appeal is made whenever a question 
is raised as to the terms of union. At first 
the rudiments of a creed appear in the formu- 
las used at baptism, to which the candidate 
was asked to consent as the condition of 
being received into the Christian body. No 
profession, indeed, seems to have been exacted 
originally, as at the day of Pentecost : the 
willingness to be baptized was sufficient. But 



138 CREEDS AND CONFESSIONS OF FAITH 

as the system began to be more definite, it was 
natural that some such test should be re- 
quired. They were such as we find in the 
story o£ the Ethiopian eunuch in Acts viii., 
^'I believe that Jesus Christ is the Son of 
God/' which, if not a part of the original 
document, is probably quite an early inser- 
tion. Probably the words of our Lord, which 
require that baptism should be in the name of 
Father, Son, and Holy Ghost, were very early 
converted into a profession of faith on the 
part of the candidate, and this was the foun- 
dation of all the creeds. As time went on, 
and the simple confession of the three names 
came to be viewed in the light of fuller know- 
ledge and reflection, it was natural that some 
amplification should take place ; and when 
controversies arose in which the whole Church 
took part, and statements which were judged 
untrue were put forward in a dogmatic form, 
it could hardly be but that these should be 
met by formal dogmas on the other side, 
which were incorporated into the creed. It 
may, however, be observed that the Gnostic 
systems, which touched even more funda- 
mental questions than those raised in the 
fourth century, gave birth to no creeds ; and 



CREEDS AND CONFESSIONS OF FAITH 139 

that Pelagianism was simply put aside at the 
Council of Ephesus with a few words of un- 
reasoned condemnation ; so that we cannot 
assume that the existence of heresy is a pro- 
per ground for imposing statements of behef 
upon the Church generally. At a later time, 
in the sixteenth century, the great upheaval 
of mind and liberation of human thought in 
the Reformation gave birth on the Protestant 
side to detailed expositions of doctrine, and 
on the Roman Catholic side to the creed of 
Pius IV. It would be as impossible to deal 
with all the confessions of faith of the six- 
teenth century as with the numerous creeds 
which were put forward on one side or the 
other in the fourth and fifth centuries. But 
in almost all cases the Reformation confes- 
sions refer to or incorporate the main doctrines 
of the earlier creeds which remained in com- 
mon use up to the Reformation, while they 
add articles relating to the chief topics which 
emerged in the Reformation era itself. There, 
according to Harnack, the process was ar- 
rested ; no more creeds, no more formulating 
of the principles of religion in dogmas, was 
possible. So far as this is true, it implies, 
not so much that the effort to know truth 



140 CREEDS AND CONFESSIONS OF FAITH 

and to give it a precise form of expression 
was exhausted, but rather that men began to 
be conscious that the dogmatic mode of state- 
ment is inadequate, and that subjects of such 
supreme importance can only be worthily- 
treated by being expressed with greater ten- 
derness and in more general terms, as Aristo- 
tle said that all moral truth must be roughly 
bodied forth rather than reduced to defini- 
tions like those of mathematics. 

But this confession, that it is undesirable 
to frame new dogmas and incorporate them 
into creeds, does not imply that men are pre- 
pared to dispense with the creeds and con- 
fessions of faith which remain in existence. 
Almost every religious body has its standards 
to which reference must be made. The habit 
of reciting creeds as a part of divine worship 
has been given up by many of the Protestant 
bodies ; but they by no means give up all 
distinctive tenets : to do so would be almost 
to deny the reason for their existence. And 
there are good reasons which may be ad- 
vanced for retaining them : for, first, though 
dogmatism is an evil, mere vagueness is an 
evil also, and social life seems to demand 
some expression of the bases on which it 



CREEDS AND CONFESSIONS OF FAITH 141 

rests; and secondly, where creeds and for- 
mulas which carry some authority are aban- 
doned, there is by no means sure to be an 
abandonment of the dogmatic spirit. Ideas, 
which may be vague as to their expression, 
may be powerful still as tendencies : and the 
very fact that they cannot be brought out as 
authoritative standards, with which men may 
compare their own ideas and those of other 
men, may render them all the more potent 
for narrowness and condemnation. We have 
seen lately in England, in the Free Church 
Catechism, an attempt to formulate the be- 
liefs on which the various bodies who do not 
accept the national church system are agreed. 
It would certainly be to ignore facts if we 
were to think of systems of doctrine as non- 
existent. They are present in the minds both 
of them who accept and of those who reject 
them ; and it is necessary for us to consider 
how to deal with them if we are feeling out 
the bearing of our church system on social 
life. 

I propose, then, in this lecture to consider, 
first, their legitimate place and power, and 
secondly the dangers inherent in the use of 
them ; and then to point out, somewhat in 



142 CREEDS AND CONFESSIONS OF FAITH 

detail, the way in which the most prominent 
doctrines may, with the needful modifications 
and explanations, be made subservient to 
social progress. 



What is the use of creeds ? Why should 
any confession be made, whether at baptism 
or in the ordinary worship, or by ministers 
when they undertake their office, or by mem- 
bers when they join the church body ? This 
question is the more pertinent the more the 
sectarian view of religion is put aside, and 
the more we recognize that Christianity is not 
an exotic system thrust in upon an uncon- 
genial world, but simply human life restored 
to its true condition. It must be shown that 
the feelings which dictate the use of creeds 
are worthy and not fictitious. 

First, there is a kind of necessity, which is 
felt by some more than others, but by all in 
some degree, to speak out what we strongly 
feel. It was said by Goethe that all that he 
had written was due to this impulse, that it 
was all a confession of his own inner feelings. 
With him it issued in the writing of poetry ; 
but it has as many phases as there are means 



CREEDS AND CONFESSIONS OF FAITH 143 

by which man communicates with his fellows. 
Many of us feel it to be of use, and indeed to 
be an irresistible impulse, even when we are 
alone, to speak aloud what we are thinking. 
In ancient times all reading was di/ayi/coo-ts, a 
reading aloud, and all prayer was spoken 
prayer. Possibly the disuse of this has made 
both these actions more desultory. The or- 
gans of speech and of thought are so closely 
allied that there is some danger in their sepa- 
ration. One of the greatest philologists of 
our time. Professor Max Miiller, whose loss 
my own University and all the world are now 
lamenting, declares them to be exactly equiva- 
lent. We think in words, and the word 
once formed within craves expression by the 
outward voice. If I feel gratitude to God, a 
deep sense of his fatherly love, especially 
when tested in experience, or am aspiring in 
a definite manner towards his image as seen 
in Christ, or am longing for fuller supplies 
of the Holy Spirit, I cannot be content with 
a secret feeling of all this : I want to say it 
out, and to say it loud. 

Further, the social spirit, on which we are 
dwelling, seems to demand this of us. Why 
should I shut up my inner feeHngs from my 



144 CREEDS AND CONFESSIONS OF FAITH 

brother, or he from me ? May not reticence 
go too far, even where it is prompted by sin- 
cerity ? Is there not some danger that the 
thought or the feeling may be atrophied by 
having no expression in the voice ? If men 
disagree, or feel coldly towards one another, 
no doubt private confidences will be impossi- 
ble, and public confessions will be checked by 
the fear of inconsistency or of mutual con- 
demnation. But when we feel the mutual 
confidence and common aspiration of bro- 
thers there is a deep satisfaction and an acces- 
sion of strength to our faith in imparting 
those things which have given joy to our 
own hearts, and in enjoying the thrill which 
their response gives us, in speaking it out to- 
gether, with the strength and the delight of 
sympathy. 

In common life we are largely dependent 
on the words which express to us the gist of 
the matter in hand. Men are feeling about 
in different directions under a half conscious 
sense of something which they think or want : 
and some orator or some publicist gives them 
what the French call ^' Le mot de la situa- 
tio7i/^ which interprets to them their wants, 
and sums up many facts in one idea. Such 



CREEDS AND CONFESSIONS OF FAITH 145 

words are apt to gain too large an empire 
over the mind, and they become poor and 
common by constant use. But they have their 
legitimate use, and it is our duty to use them 
and to guard them against misuse. 

Moreover, the promises of the Gospel are 
not given only to secret belief, but to open 
confession. " Whosoever shall confess me 
before men, him will I confess ; '^ and '' If 
thou shalt confess with thy mouth and believe 
with thine heart, thou shalt be saved ; for 
with the heart man beheveth unto righteous- 
ness, and with the mouth confession is made 
unto salvation." No doubt, when the fear 
of hypocrisy or the mistrust of men seals our 
lips, we may find other modes of expressing 
ourselves, in signs, or actions, or other parts 
of the Christian life, which God will recog- 
nize, and man also. But the simple and 
natural means of expression is the living voice. 

The creeds were known in Greek and Latin 
as the Symbols. They were the signs and 
watchwords by which Christ's soldiers recog- 
nized one another. The power of words, 
which has just now been touched upon, is 
greatly heightened when they are used by 
many in common. They draw forth mutual 



146 CREEDS AND CONFESSIONS OF FAITH 

confidence ; they stimulate, they have a kind 
of physical action upon the nerves beyond 
their merely rational meaning ; so that such 
words as Amen, Hallelujah, Abba, or Mara- 
natha, though their original meaning may 
hardly be known, seem to have more power 
in Hebrew, as a vehicle for concentrated 
thought, than their equivalents in the lan- 
guages in common use. Any one who has 
witnessed the worship of the Mahometan Der- 
vishes, and has seen them stimulated to ecstasy 
by the repetition in many tones of the simple 
words, " La illah illah 'Hah,'' " There is no 
God, but God," clasping each other's hands, 
swaying and bending before and behind till 
their long hair sweeps the ground, and raising 
their united voices till the dome above them 
seems to be filled with one undivided sound, 
knows, as he could hardly have conceived 
otherwise, the power of a few words thor- 
oughly believed, and confessed with united 
energy. It is true that fanaticism is a large 
ingredient in such scenes, but it must be our 
business to substitute enthusiasm for fanati- 
cism ; and when in a short summary of our 
faith a whole body of Christian believers con- 
fess the God in whom we trust, the Father, 



CREEDS AND CONFESSIONS OF FAITH 147 

Son, and Holy Ghost, the blending of hearts 
and voices together heightens our faith and 
raises us to enthusiasm, and sends us forth 
with hearts and convictions strengthened for 
the service of God. Where creeds are not 
used in worship, hymns often serve the same 
purpose. And we may widen out our thought 
so as to embrace not religious worship only, 
but all assemblies of men in which deep con- 
victions express themselves in forms of words 
to which all give a hearty assent. 

II 

But we must point out the dangers to 
which such expressions of our faith are liable. 

The first of these is that we may easily 
come to put words instead of conviction. 
This is the danger of all forms when often 
repeated, even those of prayer and of the 
sacraments. Even words which at first re- 
present our convictions most fully tend to 
become important in themselves ; and while 
we use them the conviction wanes away, and 
nothing is left but a hollow sound. 

Then again, there is a phase of experience 
in which we are carried away by the common 
consent and enthusiasm of all around us, 



148 CREEDS AND CONFESSIONS OF FAITH 

Tvhile conviction is weak and wavering ; the 
feelings are strongly excited, but the resolu- 
tion does not match it. Like Ananias and 
Sapphira, we partake, but in a spurious man- 
ner, of self-renunciation and self-abandonment, 
so as to promise more than we really intend, 
and profess what is not fully borne out by 
our lives. And this is especially the case 
where expressions which imply intense devo- 
tion or spirituality are put into the mouths of 
large bodies of men. 

There is another kind of hypocrisy which 
may be produced by creeds and confessions, 
especially when they are long and minute. 
The statements evoke questionings, and men 
cannot fully answer them. But the confes- 
sion is exacted, either as a condition of en- 
trance into a religious society, or an admis- 
sion to office, or simply in private society by 
persons to whom a man feels himself beholden, 
or whom he is unwilling to distress. Perhaps 
everything is made to turn on some minute 
and non-essential condition. A man in such 
a case, partly from fear, partly from sympa- 
thy, partly from modesty, and from a kind of 
shame at not joining in a confession which 
those beside him are making without question, 



CREEDS AND CONFESSIONS OF FAITH 149 

tries to accommodate his conscience to propo- 
sitions to which his assent is at best doubtful, 
and his sense of truth may suffer from the 
process. 

There is another way in which these state- 
ments of doctrine may injure truth. They 
become party watchwords. Those who ac- 
cept them appear to us to be the right sort of 
men, and those who do not are condemned. 
And so we put aside the true standard of 
judgment, that of the life, and judge men 
according as they can or cannot frame their 
lips to pronounce our shibboleth. This has 
led again and again in Christian history to a 
callousness of conscience which results first in 
untruth and then in cruelty. 

But the most marked danger is that creeds 
and confessions rarely escape the evils which 
beset every phase of dogmatism. 

As the Church expanded, it came in contact 
with the philosophy of Greece and the hard 
legal system of Rome, and discussions arose, 
such as those to which the restless Greek mind 
was accustomed. When we read the account 
given by St. Paul, in 1 Cor. xiv., of some 
scenes in the early Christian assemblies, we 
cannot help being reminded of some of the 



160 CREEDS AND CONFESSIONS OF FAITH 

descriptions of the Greek schools o£ philoso- 
phy. It seems, indeed, to be of the nature of 
strong religious conviction to take delight in 
intellectual refinements, though experiences 
like that of Baxter in his old age tend to 
make men go back to simple principles. The 
revolution wrought in human thought by the 
advance of Christianity brought an unsettle- 
ment which it was difiB.cult to allay. Men 
were in danger of being carried into extrava- 
gances such as those we read of in the epistles 
to the Colossians and to Timothy, which after- 
wards developed into the various forms of 
Gnosticism ; or, later on, they fell into Neo- 
Platonism or Manichaeism. We may think 
that it would have been better to have simply 
met speculation by argument, as St. Paul 
seems to have done, in the assurance that the 
power of the Christian life would gradually 
raise men to what St. Paul dwells on with so 
much delight in the Epistle to Timothy, ' the 
sound (sane, or wholesome) words of Christ 
himself, and the teaching which is according 
to godliness ; ' and indeed, as has been already 
remarked, the Gnostic controversies, though 
they went so deep, left no creeds behind 
them. But it cannot be a matter of wonder 



CREEDS AND CONFESSIONS OF FAITH 151 

or of blame that, when speculations arose 
which seemed to bring into question the com- 
plete godhead o£ Christ, on whom the Church 
was calling upon the world to place an abso- 
lute reliance, men should have wished to have 
definite statements to set against those which 
were at times thrust upon their acceptance. 
It was said, indeed, by a great bishop and 
church historian of the last generation in Eng- 
land that the decision at Nicaea was the great- 
est calamity which ever befell the Church. 
But it is difficult to see how it could have 
been avoided. The Greek mind was subtle, 
clear, and confident, and was accustomed to 
pronounce upon abstract subjects. The word 
dogma meant first the opinion or ipse dixit 
of a philosophical leader, which his pupils ac- 
cepted on his authority; and secondly, the 
decree or resolution of a popular assembly, 
such as the ruling councils at Athens, whose 
decisions began with the form : ^' It has 
seemed good to the council and the people " 

(AeSo/crat rfj /SovXfj kol to) S'qiJuA, ThcUCC it paSScd 

into the common name for a philosophical 
doctrine. And as the Greeks were divided 
into numerous sects, each with a series of dog- 
mas of its own, there was the fear lest the 



152 CREEDS AND CONFESSIONS OF FAITH 

Church in like manner should be torn into 
fragments. Indeed^ the adherents of the vari- 
ous creeds which arose in the fourth and fifth 
centuries might well have been considered as 
the beginning of sects who were drifting 
away from one another. It may be that by 
patience and care this danger might have 
been avoided^ without any distinct pronounce- 
ment of a universal dogma. Signs are not 
wanting that the danger of dogmatism was 
recognized by earnest men. An instructive 
story is told by the historian Socrates which 
bears upon this. " A short time/' he says, 
" before the general assembling of the bishops 
at Nicsea, the disputants engaged in prepara- 
tory logical contests before the multitudes ; 
and when many were attracted by the inter- 
est of their discourses, one of the laity, a con- 
fessor, who was a man of unsophisticated un- 
derstanding, reproved these reasoners, telhng 
them that Christ and his apostles did not teach 
us dialectics nor art nor vain subtleties, but 
simple-mindedness, which is preserved by faith 
and good works. As he said this, all present 
admired the speaker, and assented to the jus- 
tice of his remarks ; and the disputants them- 
selves, after hearing his plain statement of the 



CREEDS AND CONFESSIONS OF FAITH 153 

truth^ exercised a greater degree of modera- 
tion. Thus, then, was the disturbance caused 
by these logical debates suppressed at this 
time.'' 

It cannot be said, unhappily, that these 
dialectical subtleties were put aside, or that 
they left no mark upon the creeds. The 
Greek mind continued to refine upon Chris- 
tian truth, until all reality had waned away. 
Even the last Greek emperor had a peculiar 
theory of his own on some minute point of 
our Lord's personality. And the common 
people seem to have been infected with this 
propensity. Gregory Nazianzen tells how in 
his time it was impossible to go into a shop 
in Constantinople without being asked to as- 
sent to some Arian proposition ; and, though 
the Arians were the aggressive side at that 
time, we may be sure that the orthodox were 
equally eager, with results of blended good 
and evil. It cannot be doubted, I think, that, 
when Mahometanism arose, one of the reasons 
of its rapid progress among the Christians of 
the East was its possession of a short mono- 
theistic creed, which had a greater note of 
reality than these refinements. 

Nevertheless, we may trace a certain gran- 



154 CREEDS AND CONFESSIONS OF FAITH 

deur and a noble reticence, not apart from 
the action of the spirit of God, in the creeds 
as they have come down to us. It is natural, 
no doubt, to contrast the simplicity of such 
words as those of our Lord in the Sermon 
on the Mount, and his naming God simply as 
the Father, with the philosophical expres- 
sions even of the Nicene Creed, '' God of God, 
Light of Light, very God of very God, begot- 
ten not made, being of one Substance with 
the Father." But to those who framed the 
creeds all such expressions were natural and 
real ; and the transition just pointed out was 
but like the translation from one language 
to another, from that of the Aramaic peasant 
of Galilee to that of the intellectual Greek. 
Moreover, must we not account it a noble 
effort of the human mind — one indeed of 
the noblest — to endeavor to argue out its 
convictions and to give them a logical and 
systematic form? This must be admitted, only 
with two provisos : The one, that men should 
be aware that their logic and their words 
are no full measure of divine truth, so that, 
when they have said their best, they should 
acknowledge, like St. Paul, that, even in such 
a matter as the doctrine of justification, good 



CREEDS AND CONFESSIONS OF FAITH 155 

men may be ^^ otherwise minded/' and ^' If 
any man thinketh that he knoweth anything, 
he knoweth nothing yet as he ought to know." 
The other is that they must acknowledge the 
right of coming generations to retranslate 
the truth out of Greek thought into that of 
the West and of modern times. " We can no 
more think in Greek/' says Sabatier, '^ than we 
can talk in Greek ; " and the great danger of 
all dogmatic systems is that they tend unduly 
to perpetuate themselves and to overlay the 
more genuine expression which might be 
given to the truth which they contain. 

This is what happened in the Eoman world. 
The Latin-speaking Fathers caught up the 
expressions of the East, and hardened them 
down into the forms of Eoman positivism 
and Roman law. It is a curious fact, and one 
which has hardly received sufficient atten- 
tion, that the knowledge of Greek had almost 
disappeared from the Western Empire at 
the end of the fourth century. Augustine, 
though much influenced by Plato's philosophy, 
yet could only read Greek imperfectly. His 
friend Rufinus, when he came to Rome in 398 
after a long sojourn in Palestine, describes the 
manner in which he was beset by his Latin 



156 CREEDS AND CONFESSIONS OF FAITH 

friends with petitions that he would translate 
the works of the great Greek Christian writ- 
ers, which they had heard of but had not read. 
His friend, Paulinus of Nola, a poet and man 
of culture, admits that he entirely failed in 
an attempt which he made to write a Latin 
version of the Eecognitions of St. Clement 
and begged Rufinus to undertake it. Rufinus 
complied with the requests of his friends, and 
it is to his labors that we are indebted for 
the power to read the Trepl apx^i^ of Origen, of 
which the original has disappeared. But the 
Latins, having so little knowledge of Greek, 
took the Greek philosophic terms and trans- 
lated them into Latin as they could, — a pro- 
cess which often resulted in confusion. This 
is seen in the well-known instance of the 
word vTToo-Tao-ts, which was rendered in Latin 
by Person, and ovaia, which was rendered Sub- 
stance, whereas it is the word vTrocTToiaLq which 
etymologically means substance. Jerome 
writes to Pope Damasus that he is tormented 
by his Greek neighbors who require that he 
should say "Three Hypostases or Substances," 
whereas he had always said, " Three Persons 
and one Substance." With this and similar 
inadequate renderings the theology of Greece 



CREEDS AND CONFESSIONS OF FAITH 157 

passed over to the West^ and eventually was 
systematized in the Quicumque Vult or Atha- 
nasian Creed, with its exactness of form 
rather than of thought, and its damnatory 
clauses which reflect the hardness of Roman 
law. 

It has been attempted in the present day to 
contrast the theology of the East and the 
West, and especially that of Alexandria and 
of Carthage, as though the Greeks had all 
the merit and the Latins the demerit. But 
several things need to be said in modification 
of this. It must be remembered that Origen, 
the chief name of the Alexandrian school, 
was banned in his own city ; and that it was 
Theophilus, Bishop of Alexandria, and Epipha- 
nius of Cyprus, at least as much as the Bishop 
of Rome, who caused the memory of Origen to 
be condemned as that of a heretic ; also, that 
though we may admit that the Eastern con- 
ception of the Divine immanence was truer 
than that dualistic conception which prevailed 
in the West and made God almost an intruder 
in his own world, yet the Eastern conception 
led to no great development of doctrine or 
practice after the age of the great Fathers ; 
whereas the Western, by tormenting the 



158 CREEDS AND CONFESSIONS OF FAITH 

human mind and making it realize sin and 
redemption, begat Anselm and Aquinas, St. 
Francis and St. Louis, Wyeliffe, and Luther, 
If the East was truer to God, at least on the 
metaphysical side, the West was truer to hu- 
manity and its practical needs. Each con- 
ceived God as best it could. We must vener- 
ate Cyprian and Augustine as well as Clement 
and Origen and Athanasius ; but we must 
not bind ourselves in any absolute way to 
either theology, but translate the great Chris- 
tian truths into the terms of modern life and 
its social needs. 

We shall have to deal later on with the 
chief doctrines of the three creeds which have 
come to us as almost universally held. The 
Roman or Apostohc Creed is the most perfect 
of those formed in the West out of the bap- 
tismal formula, and consists mainly in bare 
statements of fact. It was at first shorter and 
did not contain several of the articles such 
as '' descended into hell," which afterwards 
gained so vast a development. These, accord- 
ing to Harnack, were added in Gaul in the 
fifth century, during which for a time it was 
superseded in Eome by the Nicene Creed, 
though it was afterwards re-adopted in its 



CREEDS AND CONFESSIONS OF FAITH 159 

amplified form. It is remarkable that, when 
this creed was partially adopted in the East, 
the attempt was made to give it a controver- 
sial bearing in opposition to Gnosticism by the 
insertion of '' truly " in the clauses relating 
to Christ. " He truly suffered, was truly 
buried." But this tendency to add ideas to 
the facts was set aside in the West, and the 
Eoman Creed remains uncontroversial. It 
could hardly be used for the condemnation 
of Gnosticism, or Arianism, or Pelagianism, 
which afterwards gained such a wide impor- 
tance. In the Nicene Creed, on the other 
hand, ideas are dominant. There also two 
clauses, the virgin birth and descent into 
hell, were originally absent, as was all after 
the word Holy Ghost. It reached its present 
condition in the Council of Chalcedon. The 
Athanasian Creed, or Quicumque Vult, deals 
with the ideas imported from the East as 
concrete realities, to be peremptorily enforced 
under the threat of punishment. 

None of these creeds contain any definite 
moral ideas ; they are creeds of belief, not of 
faith ; and what our age craves is that faith 
should be living and practical. This was felt 
at the time of the Keformation, and, in the 



160 CREEDS AND CONFESSIONS OF FAITH 

works of the Eef ormers, though hardly in their 
creeds, this element is supplied : it sprang 
from the heart. But partly the exigencies of 
ecclesiastical propriety, which made it seem 
necessary to restate the old creeds almost in 
their own words, and, even in the parts re- 
lating to justification, to quote Augustine 
rather than appeal to facts ; partly a scholastic 
tendency, which was inbred in the Reformers, 
and developed itself soon after to extreme 
proportions, prevented the moral and social 
element from appearing. If we read such 
books as Luther's "Christian Liberty" or 
Tyndale's " Obedience of a Christian Man," 
we are on the solid ground of fact and moral 
need. We have there the real Reformation, 
such as Wycliffe had desired to see, such as 
Tauler and a Kempis less completely foresaw, 
such as Savonarola also strove for, — the up- 
rising of the lay mind and lay occupations to 
claim for themselves a Christian destination 
and to cast off the graveclothes of clericalism. 
But the Augsburg confession and the utter- 
ances contemporary with it, even the Thirty- 
nine Articles of the Church of England, have 
the old scholastic spirit strongly binding 
them. And in a few years this tendency in- 



CREEDS AND CONFESSIONS OF FAITH 161 

creased. In England there was some turn to- 
wards the moral side in the Westminster Con- 
fession ; but the Puritan movement was spoilt 
by the controversies about ritual and clerical 
government. In Germany the development 
was all in the scholastic direction. I may 
give an illustration of this from Dr. Pusey's 
first book, his vindication of German theo- 
logy. I will ask your pardon for reading it 
in its original Latin and Greek ; and if some 
who do not know these languages should say 
that it appears to them a mere froth of 
words, I may assure them that even with 
knowledge of the languages they would find 
it hard to make it anything else. 

Pusey says (Theol. of Germany, Riving- 
tons, 1828, p. 37) : " Not the obscurest or 
most abounding in metaphysical terminology 
is the ' Systema Theologise viginta novem 
definitionibus absolutum ' of J. A. Scherzer, 
in which the definition concerning Christ 
occupies three quarto pages in a single pe- 
riod. It thus commences (pp. 172 sqq.) : 
^ Christus est OedvOpiD-n-os, Deus scilicet, etiam 
AvToOeo's, et homo, Patri in coelis et matri Vir- 
gini (ut Virgo revera 6€ot6ko^, et Christus 
etiam secundum humanitatem Filius Dei natu- 



162 CREEDS AND CONFESSIONS OF FAITH 

ralis sit) (in terris o/xoowtos) constans in unione 
ad unam personam (propter quam unionem 
etiam secundum humanam naturam Filius 
Dei naturalis non adoptivus est) [a] TrcptxwptVrojs, 

a(TvyKVTO)Sy arpeTTTCDS, dStao-raro)?, a)(u)pL(TTO)S, facta na- 

tura divina et humana impeccabili/ " This 
was in the second half of the seventeenth 
century. 

Pusey shows that this extreme theological 
hairsplitting was not merely a speculation. 
The adherents of such a system denounced 
their opponents as heretics. Calov's " Systema 
locorum theologicoriun " is, he says, concise in 
fourteen volumes quarto. '' He decides that 
the Reformed (or Calvinists) are to be reck- 
oned among the heretics who hold danger- 
ous errors, and that they are no members of 
the Augsburg confession ; and closes with a 
long censure of the various errors of Calixtus 
and his followers." Pusey also says that 
Calov refuted Grotius' commentary step by 
step very bitterly. And he shows how this 
scholasticism killed (1) Theological Ethics, 
(2) Exegesis, (3) Ecclesiastical History. Is 
it not evident that, when theologians are em- 
ployed on refinements of this kind, all possibil- 
ity of theology ministering to the general 



CREEDS AND CONFESSIONS OF FAITH 163 

life, to moral and social well-being, is sacri- 
ficed ? Men will not listen to that which ap- 
pears to them merely a piece of black-letter 
knowledge, interesting to an esoteric class. 
And their lack of interest soon passes into 
alienation or contempt. There is more : it 
cannot but appear to men as a matter of un- 
certainty ; for methods are pursued in theo- 
logy which would not be applied to any other 
subject ; there is an air about theology of be- 
ing willful and disputatious, the very opposite 
to the spirit in which men of science or of busi- 
ness set to work. And, further, if these un- 
certainties are overcome by some authoritative 
statement, it is a statement which people find 
it very difficult to understand ; and, like the 
customary law of ancient times described by 
Maine, it is the property of a particular class. 
You must go to the clergy for its interpreta- 
tion; or, if you have gained some understand- 
ing of it, you become one of a peculiar class 
whose ideas and interests are not those of men 
living round you. This gives rise to conceit 
on the part of these within the charmed circle, 
and, in those without it, to envy or contempt. 
It was thus that at the time of the Reforma- 
tion the story of the old priest who said Mump- 



164 CREEDS AND CONFESSIONS OF FAITH 

simus instead of Sumpsimus In his office, and 
refused to abandon his old Mumpsimus, was 
widely circulated and passed into a proverb ; 
and that, as generally reported, the most sol- 
emn words of the Mass, "Hoc est corpus" 
were turned in derision to Hocus Pocus. 

It was attempted, some years ago, by Canon 
Scott Holland in "Lux Mundi" to defend 
the vast growth of creeds by the fact of the 
general growth of the human mind. Simple 
words, it was argued, might suit a simple 
community ; but as civilization grew, and 
the Church appropriated to itself larger and 
larger spheres, a more complex creed was to 
be expected. This argument will not hold. 
If it were true, we should have to draw out 
the creed to enormous dimensions. Some 
thirteen centuries have passed since the long- 
est creed, the Athanasian, was formed : not 
only would the argument require that this 
creed should be trebled because of the lapse 
of time, but, when we consider the great com- 
plexity of modern life, and the wider outlook 
which we have gained in the last four centu- 
ries, it would have to be increased ten times. 
But there is nothing which an age like ours 
craves more than simplicity. Men are wearied 



CREEDS AND CONFESSIONS OF FAITH 165 

and worn with the multifariousness o£ occu- 
pations, and would wish to find in religion, 
not a corresponding complexity, but a simple 
clue to guide them through the labyrinth. 
That clue will be found in the character of 
Christ our Lord, in the righteousness and 
truth and love which are embodied in Him. 
I propose, then, in the remainder of this lec- 
ture, to point out how this central principle 
will affect our use of creeds and articles and 
fit them for the work of furthering and sanc- 
tifying the common and social life. 

Ill 

It was a true observation which George 
Eliot put into the mouth of Adam Bede, that 
all doctrines were but expressions of life " like 
finding names for your feelings." The cen- 
tral point of all religion is righteousness ; 
which is, towards God, faith or filial trust, 
and, towards men, social justice and love. 
The task before us is to unroll what has thus 
been rolled up, and to show Christian doctrine 
as the expression of righteousness and social 
service. First, let us take the chief articles 
of the older creeds. The Apostles' Creed is, 
it is said, so well adapted as a point of union 



166 CREEDS AND CONFESSIONS OF FAITH 

because it deals merely with facts. So far as 
this is true, it is, no doubt, of use to us, be- 
cause it presents to us solid facts like the 
death of our Lord, from which we may always 
start afresh, when speculation has failed us. 
But facts by themselves can never be matters 
for faith : all depends on the meaning which 
they have to you, the sentiments which they 
excite in you. That Christ died was acknow- 
ledged by Tacitus, but meant only that a man 
of that name, whom he probably thought of 
as a turbulent person, had been put to death 
in the procuratorship of Pilate. Faith is quite 
a different thing from this : for it has always 
in it the moral elements of trust, of sympathy^ 
and of aspiration. 

I believe in God the Father. But the 
name of Father, though it means much — I 
may almost say all — to a believer, may be 
merely a name for the author of being. 

Homer's Jupiter is TrdTrjp avBpoiV re Oeu^v T€. But 

you can hardly say that he was a moral being 
at all. It is, unfortunately, into this channel 
of power and procreation that the creeds lead 
us. The Father is interpreted to mean a 
Maker, which, extend it as far as we will, to 
things visible and invisible, represents to us 



CREEDS AND CONFESSIONS OF FAITH 167 

something non-moral, at least not necessarily 
moral. It is true that the confession of one 
God directs us in the right way : it saves us 
from polytheism, which is necessarily immoral. 
But we have gone a very little way in the 
right road by its mere confession. John 
Stuart Mill confessed a unity in Nature, but 
Nature was almost a demon to him ; and God, 
he says, must either be not very powerful or 
not very good. And the mere confession of 
God as an Almighty Creator leads us, and 
has led the interpreters of the creeds, into 
speculations on the origin of matter and 
what is meant by creation, which have some- 
times been a hindrance rather than a help 
to faith. " We may say," said the late Pro- 
fessor Jowett, ^^that God is infinite, incor- 
poreal, and the like ; but to say all this of 
Him is not half so much as to say He is just 
and loving and true." It is as the righteous 
and hving God that He is presented to us in 
the Bible. If this cannot be expressed in our 
creed, and I know no reason why it should 
not, — it is confessed in noble terms in the 
Westminster Confession, — we must determine 
that in the teaching and interpretation of 
the creed this should stand preeminent, and 



168 CREEDS AND CONFESSIONS OF FAITH 

that the idea attached to the name of God 
and Father should be that of truth and love 
and righteousness. ^^The righteous Lord 
loveth righteousness. His countenance shall 
behold the thing that is good." 

That this righteousness is revealed in Christ 
is the very essence of Christianity : and this 
should be to us, as it is to the New Testa- 
ment, the meaning of the words " I belief? 
Jesus Christ to be the Son of God ; " that is, 
not the metaphysical but the moral relation 
is supreme. When St. Peter made his con- 
fession, its value was not that he was im- 
pressed by such ideas as are conveyed to our 
minds when we say, however rightly, that He 
is " God of God, light of light, begotten not 
made ; " but that he recognized a moral su- 
premacy in that peasant's form which stood 
before him, whose thoughts he had imbibed, 
whose influence had mastered him, and who 
had now given a more difficult turn to his 
teaching by the constant prediction of his 
death. To own Christ meant to own that the 
teaching of the Sermon on the Mount, of the 
parables of human life, the character of the 
teacher, the faith which made Him One with 
the Father and consecrated Him to the good 



CREEDS AND CONFESSIONS OF FAITH 169 

of mankind in life and in death, was the true 
manifestation of the Deity among men. This 
must be our confession also, and on this all 
will depend ; the character of holiness stamped 
upon Him from before his birth, " that Holy 
thing which shall be born of thee ; " the un- 
defiled purity of his nativity, whether or not 
men feel that they can assert the actual and 
physical virginity as a doctrine ; the suffering 
and death, not as a mere fact, but as color- 
ing and sublimating the idea of righteousness, 
and as being the great self-offering which 
draws all men to Him by its moral power, as 
interpreted by such words as those of St. 
Paul, " He died for all, that they which live 
should henceforth not live unto themselves, 
but unto Him who died for them and rose 
again/' Then his resurrection, however it 
may be conceived of as a physical fact, is the 
pledge that righteousness is immortal, and 
the beginning of the process, carried on by the 
Ascension and the Session at the right hand 
of God, which assure us that the righteous 
and loving One, whom we have recognized as 
Divine, is supreme in the universe, and that 
this is the standard by which quick and dead 
will be judged. Some means, I repeat, must 



170 CREEDS AND CONFESSIONS OF FAITH 

be found by which this may be brought into 
the clear light, if we are not to go on repeat- 
ing words which have a merely mystic force, 
and have no power over the conscience. We 
must ourselves acknowledge to one another, 
and proclaim to the world, that it is the 
moral fact that we hold on high, on which 
depends our salvation and that of the world. 
The later articles of the creeds, no doubt, 
have more of a moral and spiritual ring. 
The Spirit and the Church are holy; and 
the gathering of the members of the Church 
is that of saints. We have, however, still 
to beware of the non-moral intruding itself. 
Sainthood is consecration, and consecration 
may be only a dedication to some great Power 
which may not be the true Lord. There 
were saints of Molech and of Ashtoreth ; and 
even in Christian times the standard of saintli- 
ness has varied greatly, being at times almost 
identified with asceticism, and at others with a 
separate, unearthly, forbidding, and exclusive 
experience, very different from that of Him 
who came eating and drinking, sharing in 
the common life of humanity that He might 
draw men to the true God. This also must 
be made to appear when we confess the 



CREEDS AND CONFESSIONS OF FAITH 171 

character of the church and its members as 
holy, and express the belief that this life 
of holiness will be everlasting. I need not 
dwell upon the Nicene Creed, which so far 
as it is a record of facts is mainly the same 
as the Apostles' Creed ; and so far as it par- 
takes of Greek philosophy has been already 
touched upon. I will only say that here 
above all we need the power to translate the 
metaphysical into the moral. The central as- 
sertion, the ofjLoova-Lov, must be shown as imply- 
ing unity with the righteousness and love of 
the Father, — a righteousness and love which 
are the spring and the object of all the crea- 
tion. 

I will not linger upon the Athanasian 
Creed, except to point out that there, more 
than anywhere, this moralizing and spiritual- 
izing of the terms used is required. There 
is no doubt that it expresses, though in lan- 
guage uncongenial to our day, and calculated 
to give men a false impression of the Gospel, 
which should tend always to simplicity, a 
very vivid faith. If we hold fast the moral 
clue in the interpretation of the divinity of 
Christ, we shall recognize, even in phrases 
which seem over bold or over refining, the 



172 CREEDS AND CONFESSIONS OF FAITH 

desire to confess that He is truly the repre- 
sentative of the divine righteousness, and 
that this righteousness is not a mere philoso- 
phical idea, but has actually been lived out 
among men. And the same clue should guide 
us in all that is said of the Trinity. To believe 
that the righteousness shown forth in Christ 
is supreme amongst men ; to believe that the 
Father is righteous in his over-ruling provi- 
dence, and that this has been interpreted to us 
by Christ ; and that the voice of conscience, 
by which the Spirit speaks, is also divine and 
one with those other two voices, is to confess 
the Trinity in Unity, and to give it a moral 
significance which will serve for social pro- 
gress. 

Let us pass now to the systems of doctrine 
elaborated at the Reformation, and show how 
a moral sense may be thrown into them 
which will give them power for social regen- 
eration. 

The two principal types of reformed doc- 
trine are those represented by the Lutheran 
Confession of Augsburg and by the Helvetic 
Confession which is Calvinistic ; the one cir- 
cles round the idea of justification by faith, 
the other round that of God's sovereignty. 



CREEDS AND CONFESSIONS OF FAITH 173 

Each of these has been the subject of logo- 
machy and of extravagances; yet the moral 
bearing of each is apparent on reflection. 

Justification by faith may be tortured into 
the assertion that God cares nothing for the 
moral and spiritual state of a man^ but merely 
demands that he should beheve correctly cer- 
tain propositions. When this has been the 
case, the doctrine can only be shown to have 
any moral bearing by means of fine-drawn 
explanations, and it loses all value for prac- 
tical and social good. But no one ever said, 
" We are saved by belief." The saving faith 
is trust, which is a moral act or state of the 
soul. It is the very essence of a sound moral 
state in contrast to formalism, ceremonialism, 
or morahsm. It implies not merely recogni- 
tion of God and Christ as the supreme good, 
but sympathy with and aspiration towards 
the image of holiness which Christ presents. 
" He that hath this hope in him purifieth 
himself even as He is pure." Justification by 
faith then implies that God looks upon us not 
according to the feebleness of our perform- 
ances, but according to the ideal to which we 
are aspiring. The pubhcan, saying '' God be 
merciful to me a sinner," was justified not be- 



174 CREEDS AND CONFESSIONS OF FAITH 

cause of anything that he had done or of any 
profession which he had made, but because 
he knew his faults and aspired to better 
things. It is true that this may be expressed 
in a great variety of ways ; but this is the 
essence of them all, and the clue by which 
they are to be explained. We must hold fast 
this also, that St. Paul in his statements of 
justification is not thinking of individuals 
only, but of societies. '^ That the blessing of 
Abraham, he says (namely, in thee shall all 
nations be blessed) might come upon the Gen- 
tiles by faith, that they might be justified by 
faith ; " that is, that the longing after good 
which was to be found in them all, " seeking 
the Lord, if haply they might feel after Him 
and find Him," might be acknowledged, and 
so their life, degraded as it was, might find its 
place in the Church of Christ, by a recogni- 
tion of the true object which they had blindly 
been seeking after. This surely constitutes 
the doctrine not merely a moral one, but a 
source of social inspiration. 

The other doctrine, that of the sovereignty 
of God, with its issue in predestination or 
election, was partly negative, partly positive. 
It meant that neither doctrine nor practice 



CREEDS AND CONFESSIONS OF FAITH 175 

could be a matter of will or caprice, but that 
men must accept the will of God, which is 
truth. It stood in contrast to the vast appara- 
tus of ceremonies in the clerical system of the 
Middle Ages, which had denaturalized both 
life and religion, and to the trivialities of 
some of the scholastic speculations. All these 
partook of willfulness; henceforth we must 
be governed by the declared will of God. 
That this will was conceived of in too narrow 
a way is true, and also that the idea of what 
was God's will must be gathered from Scrip- 
ture alone, — an idea which Hooker dispelled 
in his controversy with the Puritans. But 
the great afi&rmation, " Let God in all things 
be supreme," was surely a great and abiding 
moral principle, which serves in the present 
and in every age to make religion and life 
divine, and to free it from the technicalities 
and disputes which our church systems often 
present. 

The positive part of the reformed or Cal- 
vinistic system is the assertion of election, 
which also has been perverted, and needs to 
be moralized. We are elected, but for what? 
To be conformed to the image of Christ ; but 
this is an election, not to privilege or happi- 



176 CREEDS AND CONFESSIONS OF FAITH 

ness, but to service and to suffering for the 
sake of others. It does not necessarily exclude 
any, but affirms that there are souls to whom 
the preeminence in doing spiritual good is 
accorded, so that through them the rest may 
be benefited. The consciousness of this call, 
and the assurance that it shall not be frus- 
trated, has made the Calvinistic belief, not- 
withstanding its aberrations, the parent of 
strong men ; and it is in entire conformity 
with the course of human society ; for neither 
in goodness, nor in the arts, nor in political 
and social hfe, are we all on an equality ; and 
it is of the utmost importance that we should 
recognize those to whom special endowments 
have been given, and that they, too, should 
recognize their calling as coming from God, 
if only they will add this, that it is given 
them for the good of mankind. 

At the time of the Eeformation the doc- 
trines of the Church of Rome were formulated 
in the Council of Trent; and truthful men, 
looking on a great time of controversy, will 
not despise contributions to truth even from 
the side to which they are least inclined. I 
think there are three main doctrines which 
have made the Church of Rome maintain its 



CREEDS AND CONFESSIONS OF FAITH 177 

power over the Christian conscience, and 
which it is important to show forth in their 
moral and social bearing. The first o£ these 
is Catholic unity, which is embodied in the 
papacy. The papacy is a continual protest 
against willful division, and a continual asser- 
tion that there is a truth in which we must all 
be at one. It is, unfortunately, the method 
of the Roman Church to give to truth too 
formal and material an expression; and the 
mere submission to the Holy See can never 
bring about the true unity. But so great is 
men's need of unity that this one thing has 
caused many of the deepest minds of this 
century, educated in the midst of Protestant 
light, to join the Church of Eome. Securus 
judicat orhis terrarum. And I think we may 
be sure that this process will continue until 
Protestants learn to ground all their common 
faith on the central idea of Christian right- 
eousness. Starting from that, they will be at 
one ; and their unity will not be the less im- 
posing because it is grounded on life, and 
goes forth in social endeavor, although their 
modes of worship and forms of doctrine may 
be different. Unity, and unity which can be 
seen and recognized, is an imperative demand. 



178 CREEDS AND CONFESSIONS OF FAITH 

Next comes the idea of Transiibstantiatlon, 
which is really a scholastic hardening down 
of a spiritual idea. The tSea of Plato was a 
mental thing, and has rightly passed into our 
word ^^ idea." With Aristotle it was ex- 
changed for ova-Ca^ which the schoolmen made 
into " substance." But substance, separated 
from all accidents, is a spiritual, not a mate- 
rial thing. When, then, it is said that the 
eucharistic substance is transformed, while the 
accidents which can be seen or tasted remain, 
this is really the assertion that to us, in our 
minds and feelings, the change has come 
about. The elements have become in their 
idea or spiritual essence no longer bread and 
wine, but the flesh and blood of the Lord. 
And, further, the sense of an actual presence, 
which leads to adoration, and which touches a 
chord in thousands of simple hearts, who feel 
that they have been in the very presence of 
God, though they may not have understood a 
word of the Latin service, is one which our 
Protestant churches have yet to supply ; it is 
a great and living force. 

Thirdly, the doctrine of purgatory has 
been a protest in favor of something more 
tender and discriminating than the assertion 



CREEDS AND CONFESSIONS OF FAITH 179 

which has dominated so much o£ Protestant 
theology, that from the day of death there 
can be no change in those who admittedly 
come short of fitness for heaven. Newman, 
while still a Protestant, used to declare that 
what was protested against in the article of 
the Church of England was not purgatory 
itself, but only the Roman doctrine about 
it. The name purgatory will probably never 
be admitted into Protestant theology; it is 
haunted by the idea of masses for the dead, 
and the immoral notion of indulgences, which 
Luther slew by the saying that it was sin, not 
pain, which we want to get rid of. But it 
cannot but be felt that social morality is far 
better supported by taking the mass of men 
in the imperfect stages of faith and conduct, 
and training them for better things, and by 
believing that this process will go on beyond 
the grave, than by the belief that only those 
who have gone through a precise and recog- 
nizable change in this world are to be counted 
as God's children, and that all hope of im- 
provement is closed in the hour of death. 

In the churches of the present day, though 
there are no new forms of dogmatic belief, 
there are certain doctrines which powerfully 



180 CREEDS AND CONFESSIONS OF FAITH 

* 

sway men's minds, to which a moral meaning 
needs to be given. These are inspiration, 
the atonement, and eschatology. Let me say 
a few words, in conclusion, on each of these. 
The thoughts of Christians in this century 
have tended to deny to the Bible the verbal 
or plenary inspiration which used to be 
claimed for it, to think of the men rather 
than the books as inspired, and to trace in 
the Bible not so much faultless expressions of 
truth as the history of the growth of a divine 
society. At the same time another convic- 
tion has come to us, — that the spirit of God 
works very widely among men ; that other 
religions besides that of the Bible are not 
wholly destitute of His power ; and that God 
has been training men generally in their vari- 
ous social systems, though the full type of an 
inspired society is to be found in the Bible 
alone. How far will this lead us ? It cannot 
stop short of the belief that, wherever truth 
and goodness are to be found, there is the 
work of the spirit of God. We must cease 
to appeal to the Bible contrary to the dictates 
of advancing knowledge or of common sense ; 
we must take its utterances in connection with 
the age in which they were written, and each 



CREEDS AND CONFESSIONS OF FAITH 181 

part in connection with the whole. No part 
is without its inspiration when viewed in 
connection with Christ himself. The life 
of Christ and his teachings, which are its 
centre, will always be supreme over the hu- 
man conscience ; but we shall also recognize 
God's word and its divine authority in all 
that is true and good, whether in literature, 
or in science, or in social movements. 

The atonement is that side of the incarna- 
tion which has to do with sin. But we are 
coming to view it less in its relation to pun- 
ishment, more in its relation to hoHness. The 
reconciliation is primarily the bringing of man 
back into union with God in thought, feel- 
ing, and action; but this can only be effected, 
as experience shows us, through a process of 
suffering and of death. The cross draws all 
men to God; and each, as he is drawn, is 
crucified with Christ. This, I think, most 
truly represents the BibUcal idea. Yet it 
must be confessed that in most ages men's 
minds have been haunted with the idea of 
a penalty which has to be removed, or at 
least of a forgiveness which has to be ob- 
tained by sacrifice. We cannot allow the 
notion that God needs to be propitiated by 



182 CREEDS AND CONFESSIONS OF FAITH 

a bloody victim who undergoes the punish- 
ment instead of those to whom it was due. 
But we can admit that the Father's heart 
needs the satisfaction of the acknowledgment 
of sin and its just consequences. The teach- 
ing of Macleod Campbell, which he found 
shadowed forth but dismissed by Jonathan 
Edwards, that in Christ as the typical man, 
in whom humanity is built up, both God and 
man behold a repentant world, is surely a 
worthy satisfaction of the demand of the hu- 
man conscience ; and if we add that the 
power of the cross to draw all men was known 
from the first to God, we may well admit 
that the cross was a necessity, and that it was 
a true satisfaction to the Father for the sins 
of the whole world. As a social power, it 
must always be the source of that self-sacri- 
fice without which no society can hold to- 
gether, and no great work of social regenera- 
tion can be carried on. I may direct attention 
of those who would wish to follow out this 
thought to some remarkable articles which 
have lately appeared in the " Contemporary 
Review," on ^^The crucifixion as an evolu- 
tionary force." 

Lastly, the teaching of eschatology has 



CREEDS AND CONFESSIONS OF FAITH 183 

undergone a considerable change. The idea 
that Christ will personally reappear in this 
world, that there will be a judgment in which 
each man's lot will be irrevocably fixed, and 
that then a final severance will take place 
between two classes, the utterly wicked and 
the absolutely good, is felt to be unreal. It 
is also not justified by Scripture. For scrip- 
tural expressions are ideal : " the good," " the 
wicked," " the froward," " the liberal," " the 
just," are typical persons. No such people 
ever actually lived, though many, no doubt, 
are very wicked, and on the other hand 
many, we trust, partake of Christ's righteous- 
ness by the aspiration which is described by 
St. Paul, "I count not myself to have ap- 
prehended, but I press towards the mark." 
Moreover, the idea of our Lord's coming again 
in this manner is untrue. In the passage from 
which it is derived, our Lord's words before 
the high priest, he did not say, as the Old 
Version has it : " Hereafter shall ye behold 
the Son of man coming in the clouds of 
heaven," but, as in the Revised Version, 
" From this time forward ye shall see Him." 
The cloud was the emblem of divine powder, 
and the meaning of the ascension when the 



184 CREEDS AND CONFESSIONS OF FAITH 

cloud received Him was that He was taken 
up into the divine presence and clothed with 
its power. The high priests saw Him coming 
even as He stood before them. On the day 
of Pentecost they saw Him coming more fully, 
and within forty years He had come to destroy 
their rebellious city, and to bring in his king- 
dom. That has been going on ever since, 
and we must pray for it, and be amongst 
them who " love his appearing.'' Wherever 
He appears, there is a division made between 
those who love and cleave to Him, and those 
who do not. The judgment is going on, 
though its consummation may be yet to come. 
The presence of the kingdom of God among 
men, and the hope of the reign of Christ, is 
infinitely important. And instead of saying 
to men, Come within the little coterie of those 
esteemed to be faithful, and with them pre- 
pare for another world, we need not scruple 
to say. Come and ally yourself with the tri- 
umphant company of those who follow Christ, 
and by whose efforts He is coming more and 
more throughout the history of the world ; 
recognize Him everywhere ; think of no one 
as positively evil ; make the most of each 
man ; for all may contribute something to 
the great society of the New Jerusalem. 



COMMON PRAYER AND PREACHING 

I AM to discuss to-day tlie bearing of our 
church assemblies for public prayer and for 
preaching upon the work of social progress. 

I begin by recalling what has been said be- 
fore, but what appears to me to need saying 
again and again, that this function of com- 
mon prayer and of preaching is not the sole 
nor the main work of the Christian Church. 
Our Lord, I have pointed out, though He 
sanctioned the custom by his presence in the 
synagogues, and though He used the syna- 
gogues for preaching, yet said no single word 
intended definitely to enjoin the practice on 
his disciples. Probably He realized that the 
synagogue worship must pass away, and that 
any word of his might hinder the process 
which was inevitable ; and also that there was 
a tendency in human nature to lay too much 
stress on the public functions of religion, to 
the prejudice of the worship in spirit and in 
truth. 



186 COMMON PRAYER AND PREACHING 

At any rate, the fact remains that our 
Lord said nothing about it. He gave the 
sacraments, which, as we have seen, were 
ordinances of life rather than of worship, but 
He said no more. And we may certainly con- 
clude from this, first, that public worship and 
preaching were never meant to be as they 
have often been considered, the centre of the 
Church's life — righteousness of life, in the 
most extended view, is the destination of the 
Church; secondly, that to make ordinances, 
instead of righteousness, the condition of 
membership is to reverse the balance of our 
Saviour's teaching ; thirdly, that Christians 
are left perfectly free to decide for themselves 
the mode of pubHc worship and preaching, 
only looking for guidance to the spirit and 
providence of God; and fourthly, that the 
regulation of public worship and preaching 
should be determined by this question : how 
does it bear on the moral condition of great 
societies of men ? that is, how does it contri- 
bute to social progress ? 

The Church sprang out of the synagogue ; 
but, as I have shown above, the synagogues 
were not institutions for worship and preach- 
ing only. They attempted to realize, as far 



COMMON PRAYER AND PREACHING 187 

as circumstances would permit, a complete 
life according to the Jewish law, and to ex- 
ercise discipline over their members. They 
were each of them local committees, ruling 
over fractions of the nation, the supreme 
power being the Sanhedrin : each synagogue 
was a local Sanhedrin ; worship and life were 
not dissociated. I have shown further that 
when the Christian ecclesia was formed, it 
undertook at once the whole life of its mem- 
bers, not their public and ceremonial worship 
alone. The Christians abode in the fellow- 
ship of the apostles, which implied contri- 
buting freely to the general well-being of the 
community, as well as in the teaching, the 
breaking of bread, and the prayers. And 
when the prayers came into prominence, we 
cannot doubt that they were conducted so as 
to bear upon the general interests of the 
society. 

The prayers in which the first Christian 
Church continued were, no doubt, those 
which had been customarily offered in the 
temple and in the synagogues, and it is in- 
teresting to think that in some of the litur- 
gies which remain in use, as in that of the 
Anglican Church, we very probably have at 



188 COMMON PRAYER AND PREACHING 

least some fragments of the ancient forms of 
Israelite devotion. But if so, we must con- 
clude that they reflected the principles of 
the community of Israel, in which the social 
and national idea was always prominent, not 
a separate or individual devotion. We may 
take the 122d Psalm as giving us a view of 
the way in which the pious Israelite conceived 
of religion and of the services of the temple. 
He seems to have had little thought of the 
ceremonial or the sacrifices, which would prob- 
ably be taken for granted, but to have had 
the keenest appreciation of the connection of 
religion with the social and national life. 
The temple, no doubt, is the starting point. 
"\ was glad when they said unto me. We 
will go into the house of the Lord." But 
the temple was the centre of Jerusalem, and 
Jerusalem was the centre of the Holy Land, 
" whither the tribes go up, even the tribes of 
the Lord, to testify unto Israel, and to give 
thanks unto the name of the Lord.'' It was 
the centre of the administration of justice, 
which was always a divine work. " There 
are the thrones of judgment, the seats of the 
House of David." And it was the centre 
also of social life, where those who came from 



COMMON PRAYER AND PREACHING 189 

all parts of the country met their friends 
again. '^ For my brethren and companions' 
sakes I will now say, Peace be within thee; 
because of the house of the Lord my God 
I will seek thy good/' This was the spirit 
which must have been reflected in the devo- 
tions of the temple ; and we have no reason 
to doubt that the same spirit passed into the 
common prayer of the early Christians. 

When the Church was enlarged by the 
influx of the Gentiles, the reverence for Jew- 
ish usages remained, insomuch that for a long 
time there was a tendency to go back even 
to the ceremonial law; and St. Paul, in his 
Epistles to Gentile churches like the Gala- 
tians, presumes that his converts were '' those 
that knew the law." But so far as Gentile 
associations were brought in, they would cer- 
tainly tend to strengthen this social view of 
religion. All through the Greek and Roman 
world religion was closely connected with the 
social and national life. Think of the Pan- 
Athenaic festival, when the whole people went 
forth, magistrates and priests together head- 
ing the procession, to present the sacred gar- 
ment (ttcttXos) to the guardian of their city ; or 
think of the Roman idea of religion, when the 



190 COMMON PRAYER AND PREACHING 

priestly offices were looked upon as the highest 
functions of public men. We may say, per- 
haps, that these were heathen practices ; but 
it is better to say that they were natural ; and 
Christianity does not seek to destroy what 
is natural, but to infuse into it the spirit 
"^ of Christ. Accordingly, when directions for 
prayer are given by St. Paul to Timothy, who 
was to regulate the church at Ephesus, the 
first place is held by the public powers. " I 
exhort that first of all, intercessions, prayers, 
and giving of thanks be made for all men ; 
for kings and all who are in authority, that 
we may live a quiet and peaceable life in 
all godliness and honesty." I do not think 
that this can be taken merely to mean that 
prayer should be made that the emperor and 
his deputies should forbear to persecute. The 
prayer is for the authorities as the leaders 
and protectors of the human life which was 
to be conducted in peace and honesty. St. 
Paul had good reason, from his own experi- 
ence, to know how truly the imperial powers 
could be the ministers of God's justice, when 
the Jewish authorities, who professed to act 
under divine sanctions, were the ministers of 
injustice. No doubt, in some parts of the 



COMMON PRAYER AND PREACHING 191 

New Testament^ as Professor Ramsay in his 
interesting studies of it has shown^ the Roman 
power, which had begun to persecute, is 
looked on as an instrument of evil. This is 
the case with the Revelation, where, however, 
the Beast is Nero, and the Scarlet Woman 
is Rome in its degradation under such em- 
perors as Nero was. But the imperial power 
was often beneficial in the provinces when it 
was cruel or corrupt at Rome ; and, as Profes- 
sor Ramsay has also shown, where there was 
no special persecution, the natural feehng of 
sympathy with all social institutions as moral, 
and so ultimately religious, is resumed. 
Bishop Colenso maintained, and not without 
some good reasons, that the Epistle to the 
Romans was written to ^^all who were in 
Rome " without exception, all being regarded 
as being, in promise and in potency, subjects 
of Christ's redemptive power. Bishop Barry, 
in his Introduction to the Epistles of the Cap- 
tivity, contends, in an argument the force of 
which we can hardly fail to admit, that the 
vast universal empire of Rome, at the centre 
of which St. Paul was now placed after much 
longing to be 'there, suggested to him the 
idea of the Universal Church, which to Baur 



192 COMMON PRAYER AND PREACHING 

and his school has been such a stumbling- 
block. And i£ Professor Ramsay is right in 
saying that St. Paul from the first had a fixed 
intention of making Christianity the religion 
of the Roman empire, we may well believe 
that he meant his converts to pray for the 
whole state of mankind as included in the 
empire. His efforts began with the family, 
the relations of which could be at once es- 
tablished on a Christian footing ; and when 
we read his exhortations to husbands and 
wives, parents and children, masters and ser- 
vants, we have before us the beginnings of a 
new social state : for out of these spring all 
the other social relations : the community of 
man is but the extension of the family. St. 
Peter, writing probably somewhat later, and 
to provincials, adds to his exhortations for the 
Christian conduct of the family an exhorta- 
tion to care for the whole humanity with its 
rulers. "Honor all men, love the brother- 
hood, fear God, honor the king." These 
words have a splendid ring of universality in 
them, and show the Church reaching out its 
arms to embrace society in its widest range. 

We have few accounts of public worship 
in the New Testament, but those which we 



COMMON PRAYER AND PREACHING 193 

have give us the impression of a society 
bringing all its interests before God._ Their 
public assemblies were scenes of discipline, of 
charitable relief, and of the communion feasts, 
as well as worship, as we may see from the 
early chapters of the Acts, where the apostles 
are represented as enthroned and receiving the 
offerings of the faithful, and the daily minis- 
trations are those of gifts to the needy ; or in 
the Corinthians, where St. Paul speaks of the 
gathering together in the name of Christ as 
the scene in which the incestuous man should 
be condemned or restored; or in 1st Timothy, 
where he says, " Them that sin rebuke before 
all, that others also may fear." If then we try 
to represent to ourselves such a scene as that 
in 1st Corinthians xiv., where " every one had 
a tongue, a psalm, an interpretation, or a doc- 
trine," we can hardly doubt that these ques- 
tions relating to the whole life of the believers 
would come prominently forward ; or if we 
think of the scene at Troas, where St. Paul 
continued his discourses until midnight, and 
afterwards talked with them over the remains 
of the supper till near the break of day, we 
can hardly be wrong in supposing that such 
subjects as those treated of in 1st Corinthians 



194 COMMON PRAYER AND PREACHING 

would be discussed, namely, purity of life, 
litigation, the relation of Christians to their 
heathen neighbors, and the question of par- 
taking with them of meats offered to idols ; 
or mixed marriages and marriage generally, 
as well as the exercise of the various gifts, or 
questions like that of the resurrection, or 
the conduct of the Christian assemblies. We 
need not suppose that these were the subjects 
of a single discourse by St. Paul alone ; but 
rather, as the expression " talked with them " 
implies, that any who had thoughts on their 
minds in reference to any of the topics dis- 
cussed would express them in question, or 
argument, or prayer, or exhortation. 

This also we may see clearly, that in those 
early days there was no official class who 
conducted regular services, but each man or 
woman to whom anything had been revealed 
freely expressed it. And this would prevent 
the narrowing down of the prayers, and their 
becoming conventional. The real needs of 
human life would be expressed with freedom 
from many sides. 

No doubt, when the empire became Chris- 
tian and the Church was greatly enlarged, an 
alteration in these respects came quite natu- 



COMMON PRAYER AND PREACHING 195 

rally. It was necessary that there should be 
a special class of officers to preside over the 
assembhes ; and many of the more secular 
things which had previously been transacted 
in those assemblies would be transferred to 
public bodies. It is very unUkely that St. 
Paul, could he have lived to the days of 
Theodosius, when Christianity became part of 
the law of the empire, would have wished 
that disputes about property should be settled 
in the same assemblies as those for worship. 
And the relief of the poor would no longer 
be specially undertaken there, when the im- 
perial power made so much provision for it. 
These things were done by Christian rulers. 
They did not cease to be Christian functions; 
they were administered by those who, as 
shown by their code of laws, considered the 
Christian view of life as supreme. But in 
the assemblies for prayer these functions were 
fully recognized ; and the prayer has stood 
in all the liturgies, " Domine Salvum fac 
Eegem '' or " Rem Publicam," and " Lord, 
save thy people," which brings the whole 
public life into the purview of our petition. 
When Charlemagne was crowned at Rome on 
Christmas Day, a. d. 800, he was ordained a 



196 COMMON PRAYER AND PREACHING 

deacon, and took part in the administration 
of the holy communion, as a token both that 
his imperial function was a function of the 
Christian Church and that there was no ab- 
solute distinction recognized between the 
minister of public prayer and the minister of 
public righteousness. They were to act, not 
merely side by side, but together. This view 
of matters has never been wholly abandoned 
in any Christian nation. I will touch upon 
it directly as it concerns my own country. 
But even in America, where the intervention 
of the national poweir in the affairs of reli- 
gious communities is forbidden, yet the Con- 
gress is opened with prayer, and the Presi- 
dent, as also the governors of states, issues his 
proclamation calling for days of national 
thanksgiving. It is felt that the solemn 
ordinances of national life are divine dispen- 
sations, and that their ministers must in their 
degree and position be ministers of God. In 
Paris the law courts are opened each autumn 
by a Mass of the Holy Ghost, at which all the 
judges assist ; and in England of late years 
a solemn service at Westminster Abbey has 
been initiated for the same occasion, so that 
the administration of the law may be recog- 
nized as needing the inspiration of Heaven. 



COMMON PRAYER AND PREACHING 197 

This, I doubt not, is recognized generally 
in the prayers o£ Christian congregations ; 
but perhaps hardly sufficient extension has 
been given to the principle, and the mention 
of sovereigns or magistrates or of public offi- 
cers generally has come to have something of 
a formal ring. May it not be that we are too 
individualistic ? and may it not be that the 
assertion of the mutual independence of the 
worship of God and the management of state 
affairs, which to many sections of Christians 
seems so important, needs to be supplemented 
by the consciousness that all human life be- 
longs to God and should be present before 
Him in our prayers ? 

In England, at the time of the Refor- 
mation, when the prayers still used in our 
churches, and mainly also in the Episcopal 
Church in America, were composed, it was felt 
that the power of the clergy with the Pope at 
their head had been excessive and tyrannous. 
I venture to refer to this at some length be- 
cause these prayers form the only liturgy in 
the English tongue which is well known, and 
because they form the starting-point for most 
other systems of devotion in our language, 
some adhering to them, some revolting from 



198 COMMON PRAYER AND PREACHING 

them. The Reformation was a great upris- 
ing of the lay power. It was not merely the 
transference of certain powers which had 
been exercised by the Pope to the king as 
representing the nation, but the assertion of 
the lay power in all its branches as a divine 
function in opposition to the exclusive divin- 
ity before supposed to have been inherent in 
the priestly and ministerial office. The na- 
tion felt that it had been misguided ; William 
Tyndale, whose services as an expounder of 
this portion of Christian truth almost equal 
his services as a translator of the Bible, says 
that the people had learnt to despise the com- 
mon work of their professions, which was the 
true service of God, because they had been 
taught that the only service of God consisted 
in building chantries and putting up images, 
and keeping saints' days, and such other 
things, which he calls derisively " Pope-holy 
works." Now the balance was to be re- 
dressed. He says also, addressing the clergy : 
Are you only holy and spiritual ? Nay, but, 
if a man be following the calling in which 
God has placed him in the spirit of Christ, 
he too is spiritual and also holy. And he 
applies this specially to the work of govern- 



COMMON PRAYER AND PREACHING 199 

ment : " The king's law is God's law, being 
nothing but the law o£ nature which God has 
written in the heart of man." These sayings, 
being those of the writer at once of the great- 
est insight and of the most popular fibre of 
any of our Reformers, no doubt express the 
belief of the nation. Accordingly in all the 
chief offices of the Prayer Book this is ac- 
knowledged. It is a misuse of words- to call 
this Erastianism, for Erastus never wrote a 
word till long after the Prayer Book was com- 
posed ; but it is the great doctrine of the uni- 
versal priesthood of believers, which has been 
asserted by all the Protestant churches, but 
ignored by them all in practice, — the doc- 
trine that the lay life, the life of government, 
of the professions, the life of the merchant 
or the literary man, the common life of the 
people, is as much a divine life, a scene of 
the working of the Holy Spirit, as that of the 
minister or worshipers in the church building; 
that each is spiritual, each a church function. 
Till this is not merely acknowledged but acted 
on, we do not come up to the standard of the 
New Testament, and our so-called churches 
are but half churches, devoid of at least one 
essential element of vitality. 



200 COMMON PRAYER AND PREACHING 

The Book of Common Prayer was a pro- 
test against this. It prays over and over 
again for the rulers and the people, side by 
side with the ministers of religion, as forming 
the complete church. It maintains the great 
principle that the object of the Church's exist- 
ence is not the limited one of conducting 
public prayer and preaching, with some ad- 
juncts of benevolence, but the whole Chris- 
tianized life in its widest range. I select two 
passages which bring this out very vividly. 
1. At the communion service, when the com- 
mandments have been read, the prayer is not 
for the individual, that he may meditate in 
them and spiritualize them, — a great matter 
which is acknowledged in the words " in- 
cline our hearts to keep the law " — but for 
the whole community or Church, that the 
ruler of this Christian commonwealth, realiz- 
ing that he has a ministry of God, may in 
that ministry of righteousness seek God's 
honor and glory; and that his subjects, 
knowing that his authority is from God, may 
obey him in God and for God. This has 
been revolted from at times because it was 
used in the seventeenth century to support 
the doctrine of the divine right of kings, as 



COMMON PRAYER AND PREACHING 201 

though the sovereign power over our daily 
life were any less divine if it was the power of 
those appointed by the Christian common- 
wealth itself, and if it should take the form 
of a constitutional, not an arbitrary power, 
of a democracy rather than an aristocracy. 
Thus, through a pernicious controversy, the 
truth was on both sides lost sight of, — the 
great truth, which will become more opera- 
tive as the clouds of controversy clear away, 
that the government of men is a divine func- 
tion, and its holder, unless he deny his true 
vocation, the minister of God and of his 
Church. 2. In our Bidding Prayer, which 
gives the heads of prayer commended to the 
use of the people before the sermon, the no- 
tion is put aside, which has often been main- 
tained, that the lay functions, which are es- 
tablished by God, do not belong to God's 
Church (though that Church is the body and 
the fullness of the Christ who fills all in 
all). We are bidden pray for Christ's Holy 
Catholic Church, that is, for the whole com- 
pany of Christian people dispersed through- 
out the whole world ; and herein (this is 
the important word — herein, that is, as an 
integral part of the Church) for the sover- 



202 COMMON PRAYER AND PREACHING 

eign, who is supreme over all persons and 
causes, ecclesiastical as well as civil ; for the 
judges and magistrates of the realm, that they 
may execute true justice in God's name; for 
the clergy, that they may fulfill their office 
aright ; and for all orders of men, that in 
their several stations they may adorn the 
doctrine of God their Saviour. It is true 
that this prayer does not occur in the Liturgy 
of the Protestant Episcopal Church of Amer- 
ica ; but in the prayer in that Liturgy for the 
Church Militant, the petition for the Univer- 
sal Church is followed at once by the prayer 
for all Christian rulers, that they may impar- 
tially administer justice and maintain virtue 
and religion ; and this petition comes before 
that for the clergy, showing that its authors 
included the function of rulers as much as 
of clergymen among those of the Christian 
Church. I am not quoting these words as 
showing that every particular of our English 
system is applicable universally. No one 
would think of wishing to subject the various 
American bodies of worshipers to any control 
whatever but that of their own members. 
But I quote them to show that in one at least 
of the Reformed churches the doctrine of 



COMMON PRAYER AND PREACHING 203 

the universal priesthood is held fast, and is 
applied to the , object o£ this lecture, the 
bearing of public services on the general and 
social welfare of the community. 

Perhaps, having touched on the Liturgy 
of the Church of England, it may be well to 
point out the respective advantages of litur- 
gical and extempore prayers in view of our 
present object. It is a strange thing, in our 
English congregations, that while those of the 
Anglican and Roman bodies use the liturgy 
exclusively, the others use nothing but extem- 
pore prayer. I presume that in America the 
same holds good for the most part. Yet, 
surely, the combination of the two is that 
which is most to be desired. There are ad- 
vantages in each. A liturgical form, from 
its noble diction and its ancient associations, 
is most calculated to express those constant 
needs of the worshipers which relate to their 
permanent condition, both temporal and spir- 
itual, the general confession of sin and thanks- 
giving for pardon, the praise which we offer to 
God for what He is and for what He has done 
for mankind ; and also prayer for the chief 
things required by all sorts and conditions of 
men. And, further, in reference to our pre- 



204 COMMON PRAYER AND PREACHING 

sent subject, it insures that such petitions as 
we make for our rulers and for the general 
ordering of the world should not be omitted 
through any inadvertence. On the other hand, 
there are numerous circumstances which arise 
and give birth to special desires, for which a 
liturgical form makes no provision. There 
are also moments in which special spiritual 
needs are felt by the worshipers. Some phase 
of Christian experience has been strongly 
urged on their attention ; or a period of revival 
has come ; or some special teaching is grow- 
ing up, as to which fresh light is needed. And 
it is impossible to vary the liturgical forms to 
meet all such cases. They need to be ex- 
pressed in the warm utterances of one who 
feels them and is in sympathy with the gen- 
eral movement of heart and mind. 

It is true that for certain permanent needs 
provision might well be made in set forms 
of words. Since the liturgies of the sixteenth 
and seventeenth centuries were formed, polit- 
ical and general society has largely changed. 
In particular, the sense of what we owe to 
the non-Christian races of mankind, whether 
in the way of missionary teaching or in the 
way of just government, so far as they are 



COMMON PRAYER AND PREACHING 205 

brought under our influence, was hardly felt 
at that time, but is now a great and growing 
interest with us all. It must be said also, 
with reference to our present object, that the 
constant reference to the Head of the Com- 
monwealth, as if he stood alone as in Tudor 
times in England, is both insufficient and 
misleading. There is a passage in the work 
of the late Mr. Hare on Representation which 
put this very clearly. " The ancient customs 
of the kingdom," he says, " connect religion 
with its most important events and transi- 
tions. The coronation is accompanied by a 
humble recognition of the sovereignty of God 
over all." And he sets down the terms of 
the coronation service, which are very re- 
markable, the sovereign being consecrated as 
a minister of God in quite as strong terms as 
any bishop or minister of the word. He then 
adds : " This service should have a suitable 
parallel on the day of the election of the 
representative assembly, which should be set 
apart throughout the kingdom for the busi- 
ness of the election alone. A special service 
should be appointed for the Church" (he 
means the body of Anglican worshipers), 
" and all other persuasions should be invited, 



206 COMMON PRAYER AND PREACHING 

according to their several manners, to solem- 
nize the public act and seek for it the divine 
blessing." He then quotes the words o£ 
Burke : " The sense of mankind has conse- 
crated the commonwealth and all who officiate 
in it. This consecration is made, that all who 
administer the government of men, in which 
they stand in the person of God himself, 
should have high and worthy notions of their 
function and destination ; that their hope 
should be full of immortality ; and that man 
should as far as possible be approximated to 
his perfection." 

I must not, at this point, enlarge upon the 
general needs of our social state. They 
will appear somewhat differently to different 
minds ; and there is the danger, not merely 
of risking the disfavor of the interested or 
the prejudiced (which may have to be boldly 
faced), but of offending simple men, and 
throwing back a cause we feel to be important. 
The duty of adapting our public prayers to 
real social needs is, however, apparent, and 
must be accomplished with the aid of tact 
and of sympathy on the part of the minister. 

I turn now to the ordinance of preaching j 



COMMON PRAYER AND PREACHING 207 

and I think that it is specially important in 
this to dismiss from our minds the ideas of 
the last few centuries. We are apt to take 
our own customs as established institutions, 
and only to ask for light upon them so far 
as affects their use. A congregation, an or- 
dained minister, a place of meeting, prayers 
and preaching calculated to raise our minds 
to spiritual things, these are presumed to be 
divine and unalterable. But we must assert 
that these, as well as the rest of the church 
system, are not of primary but of secondary 
importance, the one thing needful being 
through whatever means to imbibe and pro- 
mote Christ's righteousness ; and that the spe- 
cial ordinances, such as preaching, are capable 
of change, of modification, even of abolition. 
What was the first preaching of the Gos- 
pel? It was a proclamation, a heralding. 
The good news was that the kingdom of 
heaven had arrived. It had long been ex- 
pected, but now it was come : that is, the 
power by which it was to be made actual and 
effective was here among men, namely, God 
with us, showing the very nature of God in 
word and deed, and the cross (which was pre- 
sent from the first by anticipation) as the seal 



208 COMMON PRAYER AND PREACHING 

and consummation of this manifestation of 
God, the power by which all men were to be 
drawn to Him. And what was the kingdom ? 
It was social beneficence in the widest sense, 
with all that leads to it and flows from it. 
" As ye go/' said our Lord, " proclaim (not 
€vayy€XL^€a6€, but ACT^pwcrcre,) sayiug, The king- 
dom of heaven is at hand : heal the sick, 
cleanse the lepers, raise the dead, cast out 
devils : freely ye have received, freely give." 
Those to whom this charge was given were 
quite incompetent to preach sermons; but 
they could announce that Christ had come, 
and in his name do acts of mercy. 

Our Lord's own discourses can hardly fur- 
nish a precedent for the set sermons of after 
times ; and the exhortations in the synagogues 
do not appear to have had any regularity ; 
only, if some man of distinction came in, he 
was invited, at the close of the ordinary 
prayers and reading of the law and the pro- 
phets, to speak ; as it was said to Paul and 
Barnabas at Antioch in Pisidia : '' Men and 
brethren, if ye have any word of exhortation 
for the people, say on." In the meetings of 
the early Church, as has been pointed out, 
every one who chose took part, and probably 



COMMON PRAYER AND PREACHING 209 

the subjects of their utterances were very va- 
rious. In the account of the Christian assem- 
blies of the second century, Justin Martyr 
speaks of the president, after the reading of 
the writings of the prophets and apostles, 
making an exhortation to the people to follow 
their excellent examples. At Alexandria, the 
theological school, of which Partenus, Clem- 
ent, and Origen were successively the leaders, 
gave instruction probably in methods similar 
to that which would have been given in a 
Greek school of philosophy, combating ideas 
like those of the then prevalent Gnostic sects. 
It is interesting to read of St. Paul's action 
at Ephesus, when, the members of the syna- 
gogue having turned against his preaching, 
he passed over into the philosophical school 
of Tyrannus. This, we may believe, gives us 
the twofold origin of the set sermon of later 
times, the synagogue and the philosophic 
school. On the one hand the practice of the 
synagogue would be followed, and would be- 
come more settled and systematic as the busi- 
ness of the Church became more extended, 
and the persecutions and heresies demanded 
more advice from the leaders to the people. 
On the other hand, the Greek philosopher 



210 COMMON PRAYER AND PREACHING 

was the ancestor of the set preacher in the 
Church. Justin Martyr wore the customary 
dress of the philosopher, and claimed that 
Christianity was the new and higher philoso- 
phy ; and Dr. Hatch in his Hibbert Lectures 
has shown from Lucian and other critics of 
the second century how prevalent was the 
custom of inviting men of the well-known 
class of philosophers to give courses of lec- 
tures ; while in other cases they were estab- 
lished in particular cities, and their neigh- 
bors and admirers maintained them. Both as 
a school of philosophy and as a continuation 
of the synagogue, the Christian Church in its 
meetings required set teaching. Accordingly 
by the middle of the third century we find 
the practice fully established, and Cyprian 
in his letter to his flock during the Decian 
persecution urges them not to despond or fall 
away because they can no longer meet in the 
congregation and hear the bishops preach. 
But the practice seems to have been spas- 
modic rather than continuous through the his- 
tory of the Church. The great Fathers of the 
fourth century (except Jerome) were all nota- 
ble preachers, of whom Chrysostom was the 
most remarkable. But the sermons seem not 



COMMON PRAYER AND PREACHING 211 

to have been regular parts o£ the service, and 
the applause and clapping of hands by which 
they were accompanied would remind men 
more of the philosophic lecture than of the 
solemn sermons of our day. In the curious 
scene in the Church of the Resurrection at 
Jerusalem described by Jerome, after Epi- 
phanius of Cyprus had preached a sermon 
against Origenism, to which Bishop John of 
Jerusalem was supposed to inchne, the latter 
spoke strongly against the Anthropomorphite 
heresy ; upon which Bishop Epiphanius rose 
and said : " Our brother has spoken well in 
condemning this heresy, and it is desirable 
that he should now show us his condemna- 
tion of the opposite errors of Origen," and 
the people responded with ironical applause. 
From this it would appear that the sermon 
was rather occasional than regular, and that 
it arose out of special circumstances : though 
there would be courses of sermons like Chry- 
sostom's Homilies, or the expositions of 
Scripture which Jerome gave daily in his 
monastery, or the instructions to catechumens 
of Cyril of Jerusalem. Jerome describes the 
lectures of Rufinus, how he had a pile of 
books upon the table, and how he com- 



212 COMMON PRAYER AND PREACHING 

mented upon the views of various writers^ 
magisterially laying down the judgment which 
ought to be pronounced upon each of them. 
This was evidently a survival of the old philo- 
sophic lecture, which Dr. Hatch, in his most 
interesting Hibbert Lectures, seems to con- 
sider as the main if not sole source of the set 
sermon in the Christian Church. Dr. Hatch 
also thinks that the prophetical spirit, of 
which there was an outburst in the apostolic 
age, vanished before the set philosophical dis- 
course. But it has reappeared from time to 
time. It is true that in the dark ages which 
followed after the middle of the fifth century, 
when the human intellect seemed for a time to 
have undergone an eclipse, preaching in any 
form was but little practiced. In the Church 
of Eome it is said that there were no sermons 
till those of St. Leo in the middle of the 
sixth century, and his practice does not seem to 
have been continued by his successors. When, 
however, the great missionary enterprise was 
commenced by which Britain and Germany 
were won, preaching was at least one great 
instrument of the missionaries, such as Aidan 
in Northumbria or Winfried (Boniface) in 
Germany ; and this was preaching of the pro- 



COMMON PRAYER AND PREACHING 213 

phetic kind^ which may be described in the 
words of the Psalmist : " I beheved, and there- 
fore have I spoken." There was another out- 
burst of preaching in the days of St. Francis 
and St. Dominic, when the Friars, like Wes- 
ley and Whitfield in the eighteenth century, 
made their appeal to the masses of the peo- 
pie. And we may recall the work of Wyc- 
liffe and his poor priests in the fourteenth 
and fifteenth centuries. But the regular set 
sermon seems not to have become established 
till the Keformation. Throughout the East- 
ern churches, sermons have been rare. In 
Eussia only one, and that of ten minutes, is 
preached in the year. 

I think it results from this review that 
preaching is not, as it has usually been consid- 
ered in the Anglican race since Puritan times, 
the chief and indispensable ordinance of re- 
ligion, but first, that it is a matter over which 
the Church generally has full control ; sec- 
ondly, that it may be, as it has been, in one 
age, occasional, and in another constant and 
regular ; thirdly, that its subjects may range 
over the whole life of the Christian commu- 
nity ; and fourthly, that there is no one class 
of men to whom alone, as a matter of divine 
injunction, it is to be exercised. 



214 COMMON PRAYER AND PREACHING 

When, then, we turn to the inquiry how 
preaching may, as a Christian ordinance, be 
the promoter of social progress, the prelimi- 
nary question needs to be asked, whether it 
is to be preserved in the future ; at least, 
whether it is to maintain the place which it 
has held in the Protestant churches during 
the last three and a half centuries. On the 
one side it may be pointed out, that the 
spread of education, the multiplication of 
books, and especially the vast increase of peri- 
odical literature, both religious and secular, 
has satisfied some of the needs which once 
were satisfied by preaching alone. When we 
read that the English Puritans, on a Fast Day, 
would begin the religious exercise early in the 
morning, and after two or three hours retire 
for a frugal dinner, and then continue during 
most of the afternoon, it appears to us that 
such practices must have been intolerable. 
But we have to remember that the sermon 
was the vehicle for almost all the intellectual 
pabulum which the people desired. It dealt 
with many questions of the day, in which they 
were thoroughly interested ; and their circle 
of interests was very much more limited than 
ours. But the intellectual effort needed to 



COMMON PRAYER AND PREACHING 215 

follow it, the discussions which it provoked 
among the people in their homes and their 
places o£ meeting, made it the centre of cul- 
ture in a way that it cannot be now. And 
this was the case even among educated peo- 
ple, for in the seventeenth century questions 
relating to religious observances, the differ- 
ence of sects, the controversies and wars 
which arose out of them, held a much larger 
place in social and political life than they can 
do now. Burnet was a preacher to the edu- 
cated ; but he constantly had to hold up his 
hour-glass to show that the full hour had 
been taken up by his sermon, while the con- 
gregation called aloud to him to go on. Nor 
need we attribute the high position held by 
sermons merely to the interests of social and 
poHtical hfe which they touched. The argu- 
mentative and practical parts of the sermon 
were also a subject of keen interest ; but in 
the present day serious men and women will 
find these subjects discussed in many ways 
and places, and not in the so-called religious 
press alone ; these matters are not shunned as 
they once were by the daily and monthly peri- 
odicals, still less by our novelists. They have 
been taken into our public and social life, and 
hold an ever larger place in our literature. 



216 COMMON PRAYER AND PREACHING 

But on the other side it must be said that 
there is a vast difference between the merely 
individual and reflective process which is gone 
through by the solitary reader, and the effect 
on the mind of words addressed to an assembly 
of men and women by one who possesses their 
sympathy. If the set sermon be a formality, 
it will fail. If there is any suspicion of the 
preacher's sincerity, his power is gone. If it 
appear that he has got astray from his higher 
object, and is speaking conventional words, 
with but httle relation to reality, that he is 
speaking because he is expected to speak and 
not because he has something which he wishes 
to communicate to his hearers, their confidence 
will pass away, and the contemptuous ex- 
pressions sometimes heard, which would pare 
away the sermon to a vanishing point as 
the vehicle of a spirit of slumber rather than 
of life, will justify themselves. But where 
the congregation feel that the sermon is cal- 
culated to minister, to edify, to stimulate, to 
guide, and to comfort, and they sympatheti- 
cally accept its influence, the repetition of the 
same great ideas from Sunday to Sunday in 
varying forms and with varying applications, 
must exert upon them a power which no read- 



COMMON PRAYER AND PREACHING 217 

ino; can match. When we reflect on the mul- 
tipHcation of this process in thousands of 
centres and of the general agreement in the 
moral basis of Christianity and its chief doc- 
trines, the power of preaching in maintaining 
the divine principle underlying all true life 
can hardly be exaggerated. 

It is, however, a melancholy truth that the 
poorest class, especially in our great modern 
cities, seems little affected whether by preach- 
ing or by the church system generally. Rich- 
ard Rothe, indeed, the great blender of religion 
with ethics and social Hf e, looked with satisfac- 
tion upon this as indicating that the masses 
of the people were drawn to the religion of 
life rather than to that of ordinances. But 
that the common people should be unaffected 
by appeals on the most serious matters of hf e, 
that the poor to whom it was Christ's glory 
that the gospel was preached, the common 
people who heard Him gladly, should not re- 
spond to our exhortations, seems to indicate 
some flaw in our methods. And the fact that 
the wealthy and cultured attend, but the 
struggling and needy do not, makes a division 
in society which cannot be viewed without 
alarm. That women also are affected rather 



218 COMMON PRAYER AND PREACHING 

than men is not a satisfactory phenomenon. 
And it may be well to devote the remainder 
of this lecture to the consideration of means 
by which it may be remedied. 

1. Is not the range of subjects supposed 
to be suited for the pulpit too limited ? And 
are not preachers apt to be talking of what 
interests them as theologians^ of what they 
learned at college^ or of what they hear in 
church synods or ministers' meetings, while 
their hearers are concerned with problems in 
the domestic, the social, and the more public 
relations ? The minds of men are set upon 
social reforms, and these are amongst the 
chief things with which rehgion is concerned. 
They must be recognized in the preaching of 
our day. The power of the gospel must be 
felt in the promotion of temperance, of social 
purity, of thrift, of sanitation, of the better 
housing of the poor in large cities ; the ques- 
tion of old age pensions for the pooi:est classes 
must be considered again and again till some 
solution is found ; the evil system of limiting 
families for the sake of a life of ease and 
wealth must be denounced by a united min- 
istry and Christian opinion ; and it must be 
seen that the advance of knowledge and cul- 



COMMON PRAYER AND PREACHING 219 

ture is not merely not looked on as hostile by 
our ministers and worshipers^ but is welcomed 
and furthered by them with energy. 

We have seen in a former lecture that these 
and the like things are constantly present in 
the teaching of the Bible ; and the Bible is 
the source from which we must draw. I do 
not know that it is obligatory to choose a 
Bible text for every sermon^ though a sermon 
with a Bible text will probably be received 
with greater confidence and be better remem- 
bered ; and if it be true, as was pointed out 
in a former lecture, that the Bible is the 
record of a training in social righteousness, 
it must, to those who perceive this, be the best 
repertory of examples, and it is always ready 
for our use. But the text must not be a bare 
text, but be shown as carrying with it the 
spirit of the writer and of the book in which 
it is found. The ideas must not be reduced 
to dead dogmas, but shown as living princi- 
ples. The words of the law and the prophets 
and psalmists and apostles must be shown 
in their full value, breathing and burning 
against wrong, and comforting and raising 
those that are down. We must make men 
feel that the same moral and social power 



220 COMMON PRAYER AND PREACHING 

which saved Israel through its long career of 
perils, and sent out the Christian Church on 
its career of social beneficence, is alive with 
us still, to strengthen the moral foundations 
of our society. 

And the central truth of the Bible, the 
manifestation of God in Christ, must be used 
in the same way. St. Paul speaks of the 
" philanthropy " of God our Saviour, and we 
need not dissever that expression from its 
modern associations. Nor need we think of 
the climax of that manifestation in the cruci- 
fixion as separate in this regard from the rest. 
It has been called lately in a remarkable work 
an evolutionary force, that is, a power of 
self-sacrifice which so reconciles men to God 
that they partake of his beneficence and are 
willing like Him to suffer in giving effect to 
it. When Tennyson spoke in '^ In Memoriam '' 
of the Christmas bells ringing in the Christ 
that is to be, some good people were scandal- 
ized. What ! Is not Christ crucified the 
Christ for every age ? Yes, we may reply ; 
and Christ crucified is the only instrument by 
which may be brought in that nobler time, 
with '^ sweeter manners, purer laws," of which 
the poet sang. 



COMMON PRAYER AND PREACHING 221 

2. I have hitherto spoken in accordance 
with the present condition of things, which 
presumes that a single man constantly ad- 
dressing a congregation is the inevitable 
type of the preaching function. But is not 
the weakness which we complain of, namely, 
the appearance of the aloofness of preaching 
from the common interest of men, to a great 
extent due to this very idea ? It is true that 
the necessity of the division of functions, and 
the just demand for adequate learning in 
those who address a learned age, require the 
existence of a class of preachers who have 
made this one work the business of their lives. 
But does it follow from this that there is no 
place for the other worshipers in enforcing 
Christian truth and duty? There are some 
denominations of Christians whose meetings 
for worship and instruction take the form of 
a conference rather than a set sermon from a 
single teacher. The word homily, which was 
used in Greek for a sermon, implies an im- 
parting, with some feeling also for its being 
mutual. The French word conference best 
represents it, as meaning strictly a comparison 
of thoughts by the members of the commu- 
nity, though it also is used for a discourse or 



222 COMMON PRAYER AND PREACHING 

less regular sermon. Certainly there are some 
persons who find much more edification in 
meetings where each speaks his mind, and 
where their own minds are stimulated by the 
thought that they may add something to the 
common stock of ideas, than by remaining in 
a passive attitude of mere receptiveness. The 
Epistle to the Hebrews speaks strongly of 
the danger of those who remain all their Hfe 
long in the infantile condition of learners, 
" when/' the writer says, " for the time ye 
ought to be teachers." This mutual teaching 
and edification seems to have been the prac- 
tice of the Corinthian church, and though the 
scene described is irregular, the apostle does 
not blame it, but merely urges that all should 
be done decently and in order. It might not 
be possible that such conferences should be 
held in our regular services themselves ; but 
I think provision should be made for them at 
certain times. 

And if we admit that no order of preachers 
was set up by divine authority, we cannot 
think it right that we should be deprived of 
the benefit of the advice of unordained men 
in pulpit teaching. There are many men who, 
as men of science, or as artists, or as literary 



COMMON PRAYER AND PREACHING 223 

men, or statesmen, or merchants, or leaders 
of popular movements, are men also of ear- 
nest faith ; and that such men should from 
time to time bear their testimony would be 
of the greatest value. But the process must 
be free ; they must show how religion really 
appears to the class which they represent, and 
how it blends with their pursuits, and what 
influence those pursuits may exert upon it in 
return. And they must have power to criti- 
cise, and to say freely what parts of our systems 
and teaching do not commend themselves to 
them, as well as why they support its princi- 
ples. For the worst of all dangers to religion, 
in all classes, is the impression often given 
that there are certain conventional ideas and 
ways to which church members are bound to 
conform, while their belief, except in the sense 
of formal adherence, may be weak or null. 

3. Preachers must, Hke all other intellectual 
workers, submit themselves to criticism. Pub- 
lic opinion, which contains the opinion of all 
who can best appreciate the matter in hand, 
though it may contain much besides, has a 
right to be heard. Even in art this is the 
case. There have been artists who have main- 
tained that art is to be followed merely for 



224 COMMON PRAYER AND PREACHING 

art's sake, and that none but artists have a 
right to judge of it. But I quote from a 
very discriminating article lately published on 
" Kuskin, the Servant of Art " a few lines, in 
which, if " theology " or " religiousness " be 
substituted for the word " art," my meaning 
will be best expressed. " That art, surely, 
is the highest which touches our nature at 
the highest, appealing to our reason and our 
spirit. . . . Until it can be shown that an 
artistic faculty is higher than the human rea- 
son, the art which cannot be brought into 
touch with reason stands, ipso facto^ on a 
lower plane. By all means let the critic re- 
spect the artist's judgment on technique. . . • 
By all means let artists value most the judg- 
ment of their peers. . . . But their skill is 
naught but as a talisman to charm and stim- 
ulate mankind, the consumer — not the igno- 
rant or base, indeed, but the man of general 
cultivation, the critic, the x^P^'^t? of Aristotle. 
And when the critic feels that the technique, 
the means employed, are such as to obscure 
or falsify the true ends of painting, he must 
no longer defer to the artist's technical su- 
periority, but must boldly pronounce that 
technique to be faulty and inadequate." If 



COMMON PRAYER AND PREACHING 225 

this be true in regard to art^ much more is 
it true in regard to religion, which has in 
it, far more than art, the character of univer- 
sahty. Is there a single man or woman or 
child to whom we do not make our appeal ? 
And is there one of them who cannot tell 
whether his conscience responds or does not 
respond to our words ? It is often thought 
to be enough that a minister gets a following 
of persons like himself, who thoroughly ap- 
preciate and honor him. But the danger is 
that they may merely echo his thoughts, and 
imbibe even his peculiarities. He learns no- 
thing from them, and they learn less and less 
from him. And outside his own circle he is 
discounted or ignored, and loses all power 
for good. Religion has to do with the social 
welfare of mankind, and its ordinances must 
be judged by the question, How far are they 
felt to conduce to social progress ? 

4. Lastly, let men bear in mind who they 
are to whom sermons are addressed, and with 
what object the address is made. Is not 
much of the comparative ineffectiveness of 
modern sermons due to a misunderstanding 
of our Christian calling ? It seems as if men 
were addressed as casual beings, gathered 



226 COMMON PRAYER AND PREACHING 

fortuitously, and to be helped in some vague 
way along the path o£ knowledge and piety. 
But the members of a Christian congregation 
are something very different from this. They 
are sworn soldiers of Christ, pledged to make 
their whole life a contribution to the estab- 
lishment of his kingdom among men, every 
function of whose being is a spiritual gift, 
and their callings the means through which 
they may show out Christ's image and attract 
men to Him. I venture to quote a passage 
from an essay of the late Sir John Seeley, 
of Cambridge, England, as to this primary 
assumption of a Christian company, and the 
effect which this assumption would have upon 
sermons. 

" Those who meet within the church walls 
on Sunday would not meet as strangers who 
find themselves together within the walls of 
the same lecture hall, but as cooperators in 
a public work, the object of which all under- 
stand, and to his own department of which 
each man habitually applies his mind and 
contriving power. Thus meeting, with the 
esprit de corps strong among them, and with a 
clear perception of the. purpose of their union 
and their meeting, they would not require that 



COMMON PRAYER AND PREACHING 227 

the exhortation of their preacher should be 
what in the nature of things it can seldom 
be, eloquent. It might cease then to be 
either a despairing or overwrought appeal to 
feelings which grow more callous the oftener 
they are excited to no definite purpose, or a 
childish discussion of some deep point in 
morals or divinity, best left to philosophers. 
It might then become weighty with business, 
and impressive as an officer's address to his 
troops before a battle. For it would be 
addressed by a soldier to soldiers, in the 
presence of an enemy whose character they 
understood, and in the war with whom they 
had given and received telling blows. It 
would be addressed to an ardent and hopeful 
association, who had united for the purpose 
of contending, within a given district, against 
disease and distress, of diminishing, by every 
contrivance of kindly sympathy, the igno- 
rance, rudeness, coarseness, and improvidence 
of the poor, and the heartlessness and hard- 
ness of the rich ; for the purpose of securing 
to all that moderate happiness which gives 
leisure for virtue, and that moderate occupa- 
tion which removes the temptation to vice ; 
for the purpose of providing a large and wide 



228 COMMON PRAYER AND PREACHING 

education for the young ; lastly, for the pur- 
pose of handing on the traditions of Christ's 
life, death, and resurrection, maintaining the 
enthusiasm of humanity in all the baptized, 
and of reserving, in opposition to all tempta- 
tion to superstition and fanaticism, the filial , 
freedom of the worship of God." I 



1 



VI 

PASTORAL WORK 

The precedents of former ages will not 
serve us altogether in the present day ; and if 
it be acknowledged that we have to adapt our 
Christian ordinances to the changing phases 
of hfe, acknowledging those changes to be a 
part of God's providential leading, we must 
take care that we are not bound by the fet- 
ters of the past. We need not contemplate 
revolutionary changes, nor, because we assert 
that we are free to move, mean by this that 
we are bound to move far, and at once. But 
yet the knowledge that we are not obliged 
to be always as we have been is necessary for 
freedom of thought on our subject as well as 
for any action we may see necessary. 

The idea of the Christian pastorate is one 
of the most alluring of all sides of the 
Christian life. The thought of a man set 
apart to do good to all, but specially to the 
weak or poor or young or erring, combining 



230 PASTORAL WORK 

in his activity the temporal and spiritual good 
of his flock, is one of the purest products of 
our religion ; and men who have cared no- 
thing for our doctrines or our worship have felt 
the power of the pastorate, and would main- 
tain it even if all other Christian institutions 
were to pass away. Perhaps no better de- 
fense of the Gospel could be imagined than 
a pastoral history of Christianity. It would 
show the power of Christ over individuals and 
over various phases of society in a way which 
more than any might convince men that He 
is Saviour and Lord of all. But it would 
show also by how many different processes 
this power has been exercised. We should 
have different methods in the East and West. 
We should see at one time authoritative dis- 
cipline, at another unrestrained liberty. We 
should find one pastor working steadily on, 
trusting to persistence in ordinary methods, 
another feeling the necessity of stirring men 
constantly out of their lethargy. We should 
have before us the relative advantages of the 
territorial system, which takes the whole body 
of people living upon a certain area, in all the 
relations of life, and tries to build up society 
on a Christian basis ; and the congregational 



PASTORAL WORK 231 

system, which gathers together those who 
agree and trust one another into one fellow- 
ship, that they may fortify each other and 
thus influence the larger world around them. 
Perhaps no more vivid picture of a Christian 
pastor is to be found than that given by 
Chaucer, for which he is supposed to have 
taken Wycliffe for his model. Wycliffe, after 
a noble life of intellectual combat, retired to 
Lutterworth and undertook the pastoral office, 
as one who felt that in the simple work of 
training his flock, by giving them the Scrip- 
tures in their own vernacular English, and 
by the simple tracts which he wrote for them, 
he might furnish a centre and an example for 
the christianizing of the common people which 
might be propagated by his poor priests 
throughout England. Chaucer thus describes 
the pastor's work : — 

A good man there was of religion, 

That was a poor^ persoun of a town ; 

But rich he was of holy thought and work, 

He was also a learned man, a clerk, 

That Christes Gospel trewly wolde preache ; 

His parishens devoutly would he teache. 

Benigne he was, and wonder diligent : 
And in adversity full patient. 
Wide was his parish, and houses far asunder; 
But he ne left nought for no rain nor thunder, 



232 PASTORAL WORK 

In sickness and in mischief to visite 

The furthest in his parish, much or lite, 

Upon his feet, and in his hand a staff. 

This noble example to his sheep he gave 

That first he wrought, and afterwards he taught. 

The pastorate embraces men of the most 
different stamp, men like the Borromeos, in 
Italy, Charles and Federigo, men like Ober- 
lin in the Vosges, or Felix Neff in the High 
Alps, or like pastor Fliedner of Kaiserswerth, 
or Baxter at Kidderminster, or Venn of 
Huddersfield, or Keble at Hursley, or Jona- 
than Edwards and a thousand others in 
America. We should see, I believe, in such 
a pastoral church history as I have supposed, 
that in every country and under every form, 
while controversies have been rife which fill 
our ordinary church histories, and while the 
surface of Christian ordinances may have 
much in it that might pain us, there has been 
exerted very widely a pastoral influence over 
individuals and over society, sometimes in re- 
stricted, sometimes in wider circles, for which 
we could unfeignedly rejoice. 

But we must not Hnger on the past. Our 
age is one which moves rapidly, and the so- 
cial objects which our pastoral system must 
embrace are to a large extent the product of 



PASTORAL WORK 233 

our day. They demand new methods, and we 
have the experience of eighteen centuries to 
guide us. 

First, then, we must ask whether the position 
assigned to the pastor is suitable to the work 
of an age of democratic activity, when all 
men are summoned to take part in all spheres 
of public life. Is the idea of a clergy, of a 
set of men specially set apart for this pastoral 
ofi&ce, and on whom devolves, in each local- 
ity, the whole duty of maintaining Christian 
ordinances and stimulating the Christian life, 
one which we are bound to take as final and 
of divine authority ? The answer must be, I 
think, in reference to this as to other parts of 
our church system, that it is in some form or 
other a necessity, but that there is nothing to 
prevent any changes in it which may be re- 
quired to adapt it to changed conditions of so- 
ciety. Such adaptations, I think, have been 
much hindered by the claim to rest it on some 
divine but unsupported sanction. In the East 
it has been rested on authority which is neither 
defined nor questioned ; in the Roman Catho- 
lic Church, on the papal decrees ; the AngK- 
can has rested it on apostolical succession 
by laying on of hands ; the Puritan on the 



234 PASTORAL WORK 

authority of Scripture. But none of these 
appear satisfactory in a day when each insti- 
tution is called to justify itself on grounds of 
utility and of the needs of social life. 

It is becoming the persuasion of those 
among us who have most deeply studied the 
early history of the Church and its institutions 
that no special form of organization was given 
by the authority of our Lord or of the Scrip- 
tures. This indeed was the contention of the 
best writers of English Christianity from the 
Reformation onwards, till what is called the 
Oxford movement ; it was the contention of 
Hooker, who refused to ground episcopacy 
on a divine command, although tempted both 
by his own conviction of the necessity of epis- 
copacy and by the counter-claim made by the 
Puritans that the Genevan church polity had, 
and alone had, a scriptural authority ; and of 
Pearson, who maintains that the principle of 
government is alone divine, while the form is 
variable. And these writers have been rein- 
forced in the present day by almost every writer 
of distinction who has examined the subject, 
from Lightfoot, in Cambridge in England, 
thirty years ago, to Allen, in Cambridge in 
America, in his late learned work on Christian 



PASTORAL WORK 235 

institutions. But I am not sure whether the 
idea does not haunt us still that a certain 
thing which is called " The Ministry " has a 
sanction which no other social function has, a 
sanction which would prevent any large modi- 
fication of it, however necessary it might be. 

If I have been right in my contention that 
the Church has not for its primary destination 
the duty of public worship, but that of a com- 
plete life of Christian righteousness, then it is 
impossible that an office should have existed 
from the first for the conduct of public wor- 
ship which should be the one central authori- 
tative office of the Church. Yet even those 
writers who have done so much to clear away 
false views of supposed authority seem almost 
to imply that, while the growth of particular 
offices, whether of bishop or pastor, was grad- 
ual and subject to change, these offices are 
the essential and central feature of the Chris- 
tian Church, and that, once formed, they must 
remain. The facts do not appear to me to 
warrant this view. 

It is important to examine the offices which 
are often considered to be the only offices ex- 
isting in the Church, so as to show that none 
of them have an exclusive right, but that we 



236 PASTORAL WORK 

are free in the adaptation of our system to 
modern needs. In the rudimentary organiza- 
tions which we find in the epistles to the Co- 
rinthians and Ephesians we have a great vari- 
ety of names^ apostles, prophets, teachers, 
pastors, evangelists, besides thaumaturgists, 
speakers with tongues, helps, and governments. 
But these, as Professor Hort has pointed out 
in his " Christian Ecclesia," are names denot- 
ing functions, not orders or offices. We find 
the apostles, prophets, and teachers again in 
the Didache, and they are still, as St. Paul 
placed them, first, second, and third. But 
their influence is waning; and the writer, 
expressing what he believes to be the mind 
of Christ's original Twelve, bids the Gentile 
churches give heed to their bishops and dea- 
cons, since they also do the work of teachers. 
The bishops and deacons seem, therefore, to 
have been officers not originally charged with 
the duties of prayer and teaching, which were 
conducted quite freely, as we see from St. 
Paul's first Epistle to the Corinthians, but to 
have been officers originally of lower authority, 
having to do with finance and its administra- 
tion. But towards the beginning of the sec- 
ond century, two changes took place : first, 



PASTORAL WORK 237 

there came to be one bishop instead of the 
many who existed at Ephesus and at Philippi 
in St. Paul's days; and. secondly, they be- 
came by degrees the chief officers of the 
Church in common prayer and the holy com- 
munion, till, in the days of Trajan, Ignatius 
is able to say. Let nothing be done apart 
from the bishop. This change, however, was 
not effected with like rapidity everywhere. 
The churches of Asia seem to have been be- 
fore the rest in their organization. 

Meanwhile, what were the Trpccr/^vVepoc, or 
elders ? Later times have given them a spe- 
cial function, but one which has undergone 
frequent changes, especially in the churches 
of the Reformation. But in the earhest 
times the use of the words elder and bishop 
was often synonymous, so that Jerome's dic- 
tum, that they originally were not two offices 
but one, maintained its hold down to our 
own generation. The fact, however, appears 
to be that the word elder at first repre- 
sented not so much an office as a standing in 
the church out of which other offices were 
gradually formed. The name comes from 
the Jews, and among them it represented 
the local authorities generally, of which there 



238 PASTORAL WORK 

were at least two divisions — the Sof erim or 
ruling officers and the Shofetim or judges. 
It was the elders of Israel who, before the 
battle in which Eli's sons were slain, de- 
manded that the ark should be brought into 
the camp. It was the elders of Jezreel who 
judged Naboth, and the elders of Samaria, as 
administrators, who slew the sons of Ahab. 
When, then, the word is removed from Old 
Testament use to New, we are prepared to find 
that it represents, not a single office, but an hon- 
ored position accorded in the first instance to 
age.^ In Acts xi. we find the contributions of 
the church at Antioch sent to the elders at 
Jerusalem ; and in Acts xv. we find that the 
letter embodying the findings of the council 
are sent by the apostles and " elder brethren," 
a term which seems exactly to represent the 
idea I have just sketched out. When, then, we 
find Paul and Barnabas in their founding of 
the churches of Galatia (I adopt Kenan's and 
Eamsay's view in thus calling them) ordaining 

^ Compare the use of the expression trav rh irpcafivTcpiop of 
the Jewish rulers including the priests (Luke xxii. 66 — see 
Riv. Ver., and Acts xxii. 5), with its use for the heads of the 
Christian Church in 1 Tim. iv. 10. Cf. also the use of 
the words vpoetrrcoTcs and TjyoiufievoL as implying a standing 
rather than an o£&ce. 



PASTORAL WORK 239 

elders by election, we may believe that this 
was the choosing of a body o£ general man- 
agers of the affairs of the community. Of 
these some would gradually take the title of 
bishop or overseer, as having the management 
of affairs and money, while others had less 
definite functions, perhaps some fulfilling the 
humbler duties of deacon. It seems at least 
reasonable to think that when St. Paul sent 
for the elders of Ephesus, the deacons who 
ministered especially to the poor (if such an 
office existed at Ephesus) would not be ex- 
cluded, when so much of his discourse to them 
related to the care of the poor. At Philippi, 
where St. Paul addressed his epistle to the bish- 
ops and deacons, we cannot infer that these 
two classes included all the recognized offices 
or functions : it is probable that there were 
other elders, and that the special mention of 
bishops and deacons is due to the fact that it 
was through their hands, as charged with 
finance, that he had received the gifts of the 
Philippian church. 

I have hazarded these remarks as to the 
position of elders as showing that it is impos- 
sible to get from the New Testament a sup- 
port for a theory that there existed a distinct 



240 PASTORAL WORK 

and defined office of elders which the Church 
was bound to perpetuate in all generations. 

And so as to bishops and deacons. If we 
endeavor to maintain that there have always 
been and must always be bishops by divine 
injunction, we must ask on the other side, 
What is meant by the name ? It is certain 
that what is meant now is a single man hav- 
ing the supreme direction of the affairs of a 
body existing for the purposes of public wor- 
ship and its accessories ; that there must be 
one bishop and no more in the city, except, 
of course, where there are coadjutor or suffra- 
gan bishops, who constitute a mere extension 
of the individual office; that he has under 
him a diocese extending over the country 
round ; and that each small town or village 
must be under some city bishop. But in the 
New Testament we find nothing of all this. 
We have at PhUippi or Ephesus not a bishop, 
but bishops ; we find that they were not so 
much ministers of public worship as high 
almoners. There is no intimation that they 
had any diocese, — a name adopted later from 
the arrangement of the Roman empire in 
the East, — nor even, except in a few cases, 
any authority over any one outside the city. 



PASTORAL WORK 241 

And we know that for a long time after the 
apostolic age each village had its own bishop, 
so that in the provinces of North Africa 
in the middle of the third century it was 
possible for Cyprian to bring together eighty 
bishops to a council, and in the time of Au- 
gustine many more. It was only by degrees 
that the arrangements were made which we 
find in the later Middle Ages where the cleri- 
cal system was brought to maturity. It was 
one of the objects of the False Decretals in 
the ninth century to get rid of the country 
bishops and to bring all the small towns and 
villages under the diocesans. And there is a 
witness to the older state of things in the fact 
that in Italy, where church organization grew 
up at the earlier stage of development, there 
are, if I am rightly informed, some six hun- 
dred bishops, while in England, which was 
organized on the diocesan system, there have 
never been more than thirty. These facts 
certainly show that the theory that a distinct 
and defined office of bishop, having always 
the same functions, has existed from the first 
by divine authority, and must continue by the 
same authority, cannot be sustained. It grew, 
and changed, and may change again, under 



242 PASTORAL WORK 

the influence of the Holy Spirit, according to 
the circumstances ordained by the Providence 
of God. 

Similarly, with reference to deacons. In 
apostolic times they existed in some churches, 
in others not. But their functions rendered 
them necessary ; and in Rome, where there 
was a vast population of poor, which had 
been largely provided for by the imperial 
authorities, the officers who had to do with 
relief of the poorer members took a high 
position in the church, especially on the decay 
of the imperial system. They assisted in the 
communion ; indeed, when the communion 
still was a place where the poor were fed, 
they were indispensable ; and their head, the 
archdeacon, was the next officer after the 
Pope, as also he became in some other dio- 
ceses, notably at Canterbury. They became 
afterwards merely a subordinate body of those 
who after a year's experience became presby- 
ters. 

My object in this review of the fortunes of 
these church offices has been to vindicate 
freedom. Each of them has changed again 
and again, so as to mean something quite 
different from what its designation originally 



PASTORAL WORK 243 

implied. The liberty which the Church has 
used in former times still exists : no one form 
of the pastorate is prescribed. What, then, 
is to be the guide in the use of this liberty ? 
First, the social principle on which the insti- 
tution is founded ; and, secondly, the social 
needs of the present time. Let us dwell for 
a few moments on each of these. 

Is the episcopal form of the pastorate a 
divine necessity ? If it be meant by this that 
Christ gave a command that there should be 
dioceses, each having a bishop over it, or that 
there should be one bishop only in each place, 
or that the succession must be conveyed by 
imposition of hands, or that a man once con- 
secrated is to be bishop for life of a particu- 
lar see or of any see, I think history shows 
that all such assumptions are erroneous. We 
are on much safer ground when we consider 
the social principle involved, which experience 
enables us to state as a law. It is this : that 
every society requires one head who must be 
charged with the well-being of the institution 
and act as its motive power. Every nation 
has its chief of the state, whether king or 
president; every city has its mayor, every 
company its chairman. The principle is the 



244 PASTORAL WORK 

matter of importance, not the mode of its ap- 
plication. The words of St. Paul about the 
divine functions of rulers were perverted when 
applied to the divine right of hereditary- 
kings as opposed to rulers who might be set 
up by a Parliament ; they would have been 
applied with perfect justice to the divinity 
inherent in the office of a ruler of men. 
And in the same way, we may believe that 
it was a divine necessity which caused the 
gradual appointment of one man to hold the 
chief authority in each of the early churches. 
But the changes which we have traced were 
also made in obedience to divine necessities 
which made themselves felt. And, if so, we 
must recognize the legitimacy of many other 
changes. In the Presbyterian system the 
episcopal principle is recognized in the ap- 
pointment of a moderator ; in the Methodist 
body in England by a yearly president of the 
Conference ; while the American Methodists 
retain the name of bishops for their rulers. 
And in those bodies which cannot see it right 
to go further in the way of organization than 
the single congregation, the pastor as the di- 
recting head is the embodiment of the same 
principle. When this is fully accepted, it 



PASTORAL WORK 245 

cannot but lead to peace and mutual recogni- 
tion. What effect it will have upon the con- 
tinuance of particular organizations formed 
on the assumption that they are bound to re- 
main separate from others because of a sup- 
posed divine command which is found not to 
exist, I will not here discuss. 

We must apply a similar reasoning to the 
diaconate. We hear sometimes that it needs 
to be restored. And, certainly, if we think 
of the office of a deacon as now exercised in 
Episcopalian bodies, that is, as a subordinate 
ministry of the word and sacraments for a 
limited period, we cannot but feel that much 
is wanting which the early churches supplied. 
But then the sole care of the poor rested 
upon them. Now in every civilized and 
Christian community some care of the poor 
is undertaken by the government itself ; and 
for those who refuse to place the national 
functions outside the Christian Church, the 
recognition of the principle of the diaconate 
must be found in such functions as those held 
in England by guardians of the poor or re- 
lieving officers. When no such provision is 
made by the government, the private charity 
of Christians must do the work, and those who 



246 PASTORAL WORK 

administer help to the poor will be our 
modern deacons. Only^ experience shows us 
the great evils which result from the attempt 
to do this work with the imperfect light and 
power of separate worshiping bodies. We 
should look upon the formation of societies 
for the relief of distress, or charity organiza- 
tion, as following out the principle which ori- 
ginally founded the diaconate. Their secre- 
taries and almoners and committees are doing 
the work of the primitive deacon, and should 
so be recognized. 

If we take the third branch of the three- 
fold ministry which has been presumed to 
have a divine authority, that of the presby- 
ters, we have seen that by degrees the}^ be- 
came a separate order, and that first the duty 
of discipline, and later on the general pastor- 
ate, devolved upon them. But even when, 
on the formation of dioceses and of parishes, 
they gradually had the whole superintendence 
of the church work, which was a share in the 
episcopal power passed over to them (and the 
process of institution implies this), they had 
the name of rector, not of preacher, a remi- 
niscence of the fact that ruling rather than 
worship and instruction was their primitive 



PASTORAL WORK 247 

destination. Attempts have been made at 
times to restore to them the function of disci- 
pline which they certainly exercised at first ; 
but the difficulties which have stood in the way 
of this have been a constant protest against 
the narrowing of the church down to a sys- 
tem of worship and ordinances. In the Pres- 
byterian churches the title of elders is given 
to quite subordinate officers, who have but a 
very limited sphere of activity ; and the dis- 
cipline they administer can only be exercised 
through admission to or rejection from the 
communion. In the interesting account by 
Dr. Leonard Bacon of the First Church at 
New Haven, there is nothing more striking 
than the petty and prying action which passed 
for church discipline ; and the reflection can- 
not but be forced upon us how much grander 
and more consonant with the objects of Chris- 
tianity is the disciphne of the laws of a 
Christian commonwealth. The communion 
is now but little available for purposes of dis- 
cipline. It is no longer as it was at first, the 
universal and obligatory ordinance, to attend- 
ance on which manifest advantages, both 
temporal and spiritual, are attached. No 
great loss of standing is incurred by a man 



248 PASTORAL WORK 



\ 



for absenting himself from it. Further, pub- 
lic opinion is strong in the general commu- | 
nity, and an open evil liver is not likely to 
present himself at the Lord's table. And, 
what is still more important, the province of 
the national law has increased in extent and 
in authority, so that the chief part of the sins 
which were dealt with by the penitentiaries 
of the early Middle Ages have passed into 
modern codes. The judges and officers of 
the law are the true agents of discipline for 
the church of modern times. 

If, however, the title of presbyter was ori- 
ginally, as I have suggested, a general title 
for those exercising authority in a Christian 
community, we must recognize the presence 
of the presbyteral action, not in any special 
functionaries, but rather in the whole body 
of those charged with the government of 
society. The judges and magistrates of a 
Christian country are doing God's work as 
much as those in Israel to whom it was said 
by the Psalmist, " I have said that ye are 
Gods, and all of you the children of the most 
high." Those who frame our laws are en- 
gaged in as divine a work as Moses when he 
brought forth from the presence of God the 



PASTORAL WORK 249 

book of the Covenant. The administrators 
who conduct the affairs of the community 
are as truly ministers of God as the elders of 
Israel in every city. The diplomatists to 
whom the peace of the world is confided are 
ministers of the Prince of Peace. All these 
would have been spoken of by the prophets 
of Israel as shepherds of the people ; and it 
is of such shepherds, not of preachers only or 
of ministers of public worship, that our Lord 
spoke, when He contrasted the bad, self-seek- 
ing, hireling shepherd with the good shep- 
herd who is full of self-sacrifice. Can we 
dare to narrow down our Saviour's meaning, 
or to think of such functions as being merely 
secular and worldly, instead of following in 
the path of his discernment, and seeing how 
vast a social and spiritual power is exercised 
by them, and how truly those who hold such 
offices are shepherds of the flock of God ? 

It may be asked, then, whether such offi- 
cers can ever conceivably be reckoned as 
pastors of the Church in the same way as the 
ordained ministers of the word and sacra- 
ments ; in answer to which it must be said 
that we cannot tell precisely in what direction 
practical opinion may turn ; yet, surely, there 



250 PASTORAL WORK 

can be nothing more incongruous in our 
thinking o£ a judge or an administrator as 
an officer of the Church than in St. PauFs 
speaking of him as one of the powers that 
be, who, he says, are ordained of God. The 
mere act of ordination, though it gives a man 
a position in the estimation of the Church, 
and an assurance of a divine sanction which 
is a power to him in his work, is, as has been 
pointed out before, only the recognition of 
what the divine spirit has already made him. 
And, though at first those who were set apart 
as church officers included all the functions 
of public men, so far as was possible in small 
communities, the functions of the ordained 
were gradually limited to public worship and 
its immediate adjuncts. This was perhaps 
inevitable. But it was certainly misleading ; 
and we must seek to restore the juster esti- 
mate. In the small community of Positiv- 
ists in London, it is the custom, when one of 
their members undertakes any pubHc office, to 
dedicate him solemnly as fulfilling a ministry 
to humanity. An account of a ceremony of 
this kind, held for a member who was ap- 
pointed British consul in the far East, was 
pubhshed a few years ago, with a discourse by 



PASTORAL WORK 251 

Mr. Frederick Harrison. It is sometimes said 
that Positivism is a parody o£ Christianity. 
But if Christian people continue to ignore 
the sacredness of secular callings, it will come 
to pass that Positivism will represent the 
Christian idea more fully than a community 
which bears the Christian name. 

But let us suppose that the idea sketched 
out is fully acknowledged. I do not mean 
that a ceremony of ordination is attached to 
every appointment to an office, but that every 
person holding office is looked upon as filling 
a post in which he is a minister of God, — 
does this imply that no pastorate need exist, 
such as is now universal amongst us, the pre- 
sidency over a community united for prayer 
and Christian instruction, and the carrying on 
of operations connected with these functions ? 
By no means ; for we hold ourselves free. 
Whatever relations the pastorate as at pre- 
sent conceived may be thought to hold to the 
presbyterate of ancient times, it has won for 
itself a position which fully justifies its main- 
tenance, call it by what name we may. And 
I think that in all our Christian bodies it has 
in the main the same functions. The Roman 
priest may dv/ell more on coming to mass, and 



252 PASTORAL WORK 

may be too formal in his special ministrations 
to the sick and dying. The Anglican clergy- 
man may be at times too exclusive, and may 
try too much to bring every one to the model 
of his Prayer Book. The Presbyterian may 
be too rigid in his forms ; the Congregation- 
alist may depend too much on sermons and 
addresses ; the Methodist on constant reviv- 
als. But they are all teaching the word of 
God according to their best lights and endeav- 
ors ; they are all leading men to approach to 
God in prayer and sacrament ; and they are 
all ministers of Christian beneficence. What 
direction, then, may we think should be given 
to their duties by the larger social outlook 
which we have claimed for the Church ? 

1. If the pastor is to be a social leader, it 
is evident that he must act as little as possible 
alone. There are matters of doctrine, no 
doubt, on which he must make up his mind — 
often in lonely thought. Yet even in these, 
conference with others will help him ; and 
often his conclusions will be the sounder for 
being compared with those of men differing 
from himself, and in other calHngs than his 
own. In a remarkable American work which 
has been largely read on both sides of the 



PASTORAL WORK 253 

Atlantic, however we may admire the attempt 
to get men to walk in the steps of Christ, we 
can hardly feel that the full idea of Christian 
sociality has been reached. Society is a very 
complex organism, and the good and evil in 
it are strangely mixed. We see some evil, or 
group of evils, and we are inclined to think, 
if these can by any means be overcome, it will 
be well. But we may be sure that if there 
is anything in our methods that savors of 
fanaticism and makes it appear that we are 
conscious only of one class of evils, we may 
be acting in a manner very different from the 
sweet reasonableness, the eiruUiia, which Mat- 
thew Arnold rightly spoke of as the essential 
feature of Christ's manner of teaching. He 
went about doing good ; He came eating and 
drinking. Those who, to counteract the cor- 
roding licentiousness of the Eoman world in 
the fourth century, brought in the monastic 
system, did not realize that they were destroy- 
ing the family, the most precious and divine of 
human relations, the best training ground for 
heaven. 

To take an instance from our own times, 
Tennyson in his youthful days wrote in his 
"Locksley Hall" a fine outburst of indigna- 



254 PASTORAL WORK 

tion against the lazy squire life of England. 
He represents a young and ardent intelleet- 
ualist who had looked forward to a noble, 
ideal life, though amid poor surroundings, 
with the cousin who had pledged her faith to 
him. The man for whose sake his love has 
been torn from the young and ardent pro- 
gressist appears to him a kind of boor, caring 
only for low pleasures, and she will be to him 
" something better than his dog, a little dearer 
than his horse ; " and he breaks away to go 
whither the breeze roaring seaward may carry 
him, cursing the conventionalities which drag 
life down. But after sixty years the same 
parties appear on the scene; the squire, though 
he has maintained his love for sport, has been 
the centre of much good in his neighborhood, 
caring for the poor, promoting education, and 
in old age honored by all, so that the indig- 
nant enthusiast of the earlier time speaks to 
his grandson of him whom his judgment had 
wronged : — 

Move among your people, know them, follow him who led 

the way. 
Strove for sixty widow'd years to help his homelier brother 

men, 
Served the poor, and built the cottage, raised the school, and 

drained the fen. 



PASTORAL WORK 255 

Hears he now the Voice that wrong'd him ? Who shall 

swear it cannot be ? 
Earth would never touch her worst, were one in fifty such 

as he. 

We are often but narrow judges of the all- 
comprehensive goodness of Christ, and our 
conclusions may be purged and modified, and 
what is good in them strengthened, by hear- 
ing how others conceive of them. Above all, 
let us never forget that, in social work, we are 
dealing, not with a mass of reprobates, but 
with those who still bear the divine image, 
the weak and erring children of God. It is, 
indeed, true that many excellent men are 
unwilling to enter into questions relating to 
Christian work. They have been accustomed 
to look upon such things as the pastor's busi- 
ness, they are busy with their own affairs ; it 
is enough for them, they would say, to get 
the comfort of religion on Sunday. They 
will help with money, but take no part in the 
work which they support. And, meanwhile, 
there may be some who are only too ready to 
tender advice, somewhat willful, perhaps, and 
pushing. But none of us has the right to 
put aside his responsibility for the social wel- 
fare of those about him, or to refuse to take 



256 PASTORAL WORK 

any pains to benefit them. Such a spirit be- 
longs to the selfish individualism which is, it 
may be hoped, passing away. And when an 
opportunity is given, by some parochial coun- 
cil or similar means, of conferring upon the 
methods to be adopted by the worshiping 
body as an instrument of aggressive Chris- 
tianity to combat the evils around them, we 
may expect that the members will rally to the 
standard ; and, when they have exercised the 
gifts of counsel and inventiveness, will follow 
them up with practical endeavors. Such a 
council should become a focus where the gifts 
of all should be drawn out for the benefit of 
all. 

2. It may be thought to conflict with these 
views of social Christianity, that the pastorate 
has largely to do with individual cases, with 
the admission of the young to confirmation 
or their joining the body of worshipers in 
their first communion, or again with the help 
which may be given in spiritual difficulties or 
the comfort of the mourner. But I think 
that, in all these, the social bearing of the 
Christian life should be kept in view. Do 
not half the spiritual difficulties, which at 
times beget a morbid state of the soul, come 



PASTORAL WORK 257 

from the fact that men and women are brood- 
ing upon some Kttle trouble which they exag- 
gerate, and which can hardly be acquitted 
of some tinge of selfishness, instead of learn- 
ing to forget themselves in some good work 
in the service of their fellows? Have not 
mourners constantly found that their truest 
consolation has lain in going forth out of 
themselves to help their fellow sufferers? 
" Go, bury thy sorrows — Let others be blest." 
And, when some candidate or inquirer begins 
to be drawn towards our company, and thinks 
of throwing in his lot with us, it is of the ut- 
most importance that he should understand 
that he is not joining a body of men who are 
content with the satisfaction of their personal 
spiritual needs, with forgiveness and the assur- 
ance of blessedness, but of men who have in 
St. Paul's words, ^^put on Christ," who are 
linked with Him in his work as the Redeemer 
of mankind. A noble saying is attributed to 
one of our English bishops : " We have too 
long been content to ask : ' What must I do 
to be saved ? ' Let us begin to ask : ' What 
have I been saved to do ? ' " This may ap- 
pear a hard saying to beginners ; but it will 
not remain so if the body itself is working in 



258 PASTORAL WORK 

this spirit ; for there Is nothing more alluring 
and more Inspiriting than Christian work 
undertaken with brightness and zeal. 

3. What form. It may be asked, should 
such efforts of Christian bodies take? But 
the answer can only partially be given. For, 
in the first place, the avenues for Christian 
effort are very multifarious. If we realize 
how great is the bearing of knowledge of all 
kinds, of art, of amusement, of athletic exer- 
cises, of opportunities of rest and fresh air for 
the tollers In our cities, of holiday excursions 
for children, and many similar things, upon 
the well-being of those around us, we see a 
field for enterprise which is practically with- 
out limit. Some of these things we can com- 
pass, and some we must perforce let alone. 
In some places many of these matters are 
provided for by other bodies of Christian 
people, or by the general community. Men 
develop special gifts, some in one place, others 
in another ; and it is well that experiments 
should be tried in special localities, which. If 
they succeed, may be taken up in others. 
There are two things which should be well 
Impressed on every pastor's mind. The first 
is the Importance of setting men to work In 



PASTORAL WORK 259 

Christ's cause ; and to choose this rather than 
to do the work himself. Frequently it will 
happen that some good work has to be under- 
taken ; it may be difficult to see who can 
undertake it^ and the labor o£ finding out 
those who are likely to do it is considerable. 
To approach one or another, to explain the 
matter, to invite their services, to risk a re- 
fusal, — all this is hard. And one who may 
be willing may not be very capable or well 
instructed, and may need teaching and train- 
ing ; and all this takes time. We could do 
it in half the time and with half the trouble 
ourselves. But the other side of the matter 
comes in with irresistible force. The pastor 
is a former of workers. He is president of a 
body of workers ; and he is not to consider 
his time wasted when he is engaged in such 
work, any more than a teacher of mathematics 
is entitled to say, I could work the problem 
myself, when the object is to give the pupil 
the power to work it. The benefit is double 
and treble in the end. The church member 
learns to become a member indeed, a full and 
living member: the work is better done by 
forming a new centre of initiative and its 
continuance is guaranteed : and the pastor 



260 PASTORAL WORK 

is relieved of a work which may be like the 
serving of tables in the apostles' time, that 
he may give himself more undistractedly to 
prayer and the ministry of the word. 

The other thing needed is trustfulness. 
We are apt to forget that the gifts of the 
spirit are not limited to the clergy and minis- 
ters (as we call them too exclusively, for all 
Christian workers are ministers). And, even 
when we see men undertaking some good 
work, we may be disposed to think that they 
need constant supervision. The pastor must 
risk something occasionally. Too minute a 
supervision is discouraging to the worker. 
It often partakes of the character of suspi- 
cion. Each Christian man has a spiritual 
gift ; when the work is done by another man 
instead of him, the spirit in him is quenched, 
and the pastor's highest duty is to draw it 
forth, and to trust to the spirit's work. Each 
man who has some power of leading should 
be encouraged to consider the work his own. 
It is by appropriation, by throwing our person- 
ality into it, that we do the most. There are 
difficulties, no doubt, and there are exceptions, 
but for the most part it may be said. The 
trust of the pastor is the worker's strength. 



PASTORAL WORK 261 

4. But there is a jealousy o£ another kind 
of which the pastor will need to be aware. 
He may think that all Christian work is to go 
on directly within the circle of the worship- 
ing body. I dwell advisedly upon the dis- 
tinction between the body of men united for 
worship, and the larger idea of the Church 
which is the whole society of mankind inspired 
by the spirit of Christ. I consider that in 
the later Epistles of the New Testament the 
apostles distinctly set before themselves a re- 
newed world as the object of their endeavor, 
— a society in which Christ shall dwell ; and 
they begin this larger work with the family. 
The relative duties of the family are repeated 
again and again. Why ? Because that cir- 
cle « alone was open to the Christian leaders, 
and that circle was the master one, the cen- 
tral and determining factor of the rest. They 
make no condition of the members of the 
family coming to pubhc gatherings, but urge 
that all their natural life should have the 
spirit of Christ as its constant motive, the 
central principle being, " Submit yourselves 
one to another in the fear of God.'' The 
Christian Church has not always been faithful 
in carrying on this great endeavor. Even as 



262 PASTORAL WORK 

to the family, it has been often too much the 
effort of pastors and worshipers that its mem- 
bers should join in special acts of worship, 
prayer meetings, or early communions (not 
to speak of those who have invited them into 
brotherhoods and sisterhoods, or have used 
the confessional in such a way as to withdraw 
them from their natural guides, and create 
distrust), instead of fostering by every means 
the Hfe of the family. There is nothing on 
earth nearer to heaven than a Christian fam- 
ily; and the constant effort of the pastor 
should be employed in urging those relative 
duties on which St. Paul and St. Peter dwell 
so earnestly. There we have our hand upon 
the lever which may uplift all human society, 
and whence the higher society above may be 
replenished. 

But the same principle applies to other rings 
or circles of society. None of them should be 
left out of our mind. They are all capable of 
becoming homes of the Holy Spirit. A Chris- 
tian pastor will therefore make it one of his 
chief endeavors that they should all be imbued 
with that spirit. Take, for instance, the press. 
None of us can dispute its great and growing 
power. It is, or may be, a spiritual influence. 



PASTORAL WORK 263 

though also it may be coarse and materialistic. 
It is, we must all admit, a worthy effort for 
both pastor and congregation to win it to the 
right side. I think, indeed, that we should 
be diverting it from its proper purpose if we 
attempted to make all the press consist of 
what are called religious periodicals, unless we 
are able to conceive of religion as not centred 
in the organizations for public worship. Let 
the press do its own work, but in a spirit of 
justice, truth, and care for the public good, 
especially that of the poor. We may see 
plainly enough that if there were a suspicion 
of its being subjected to clerical influences, or 
those of some coterie of rehgionists, its power 
would be gone : but in the endeavor to be 
strictly true and just, and to be a real servant 
of mankind, the pastor and the congregation 
may greatly aid it. We may treat similarly 
systems of trade, of art, of knowledge, of 
amusement. 

5. This leads to another, but cognate sub- 
ject, the confession that all men have their 
ministry, and of the relation of the pastoral 
ministry to these other forms. We speak of 
" ministers " as if there were no others than 
the ministers who preside over congregations. 



264 PASTORAL WORK 

These are the ministers of the word and 
sacraments ; and it would be well if we could 
so call them : for the constant appropriation 
of the name " ministers " to them exclusively 
seems to heap upon them the sole responsibil- 
ity for every Christian work ; and it has a still 
worse effect, namely, to withdraw the attribute 
of Christian ministry from every other call- 
ing. It is a noble expression in one of the 
Collects for Good Friday in the English Prayer 
Book, which prays that " every member of the 
Church, in his vocation and ministry, may 
truly and godly serve Thee." Christians must 
accustom themselves to the secular ministry, 
the secular priesthood of all faithful men. 
This is acknowledged whenever we speak of 
our common occupations as a "calling." 
Calling by whom ? No doubt, in its original 
sense, by God himself. This original sense 
has to be restored. We speak of the prayers 
and preaching in church, as a service, and 
the fear is that we may think of that as being 
the main thing which He requires of us. But 
the true service of God is the calling in which 
He has placed us, diligently, justly, lovingly 
fulfilled. It is a large part of the pastor's 
duty to encourage this view in men's minds. 



I 



PASTORAL WORK 265 

not to be glad merely when he sees them come 
to church or sacrament^ but when he sees them 
steady and right-minded in their daily work. 
It is said that Christians in Uganda, when 
they pass men who are making a road, will say, 
" Thank you ; you are doing a good work for 
us ; God bless you." That should be the feel- 
ing of every Christian when he sees his fellow- 
men discharging aright the common duties of 
life. If men could feel God near them in 
every deed to which they set their hands, the 
kingdom of God would be very near us. 

6. A few words may be said as to the direct 
visitation of parishioners in their homes. The 
first object, I venture to say, should be to 
know them : and the first pastoral visitation 
may well have that purpose alone. A pastor 
cannot expect to do much for men and women 
individually while he does not know them, 
and can only speak, as I may say, at random. 
There are times, no doubt, when he must 
hazard remarks of a general kind with im- 
perfect knowledge, and these may lead to 
something more specific. It is always possible 
that more direct conversation on religious 
topics may become possible and natural : and 
this may lead, in an equally natural way, to 



266 PASTORAL WORK 

references to the Scriptures and prayer. It 
would be wrong to bind such intercourse by 
any formal rule. But as mutual knowledge 
and confidence increase, we may expect such 
opportunities to increase also, and the various 
agencies of a congregation bring the pastor 
into familiar communication with them all, 
till he may become like a father living among 
his children. 

But there is one point of great difficulty in 
pastoral visitation as a direct spiritual agency, 
namely, that in the homes in which it takes 
place the men are almost always absent. And 
there are few greater dangers to us than that 
either our church services or other parts of our 
system should be matters in which only min- 
isters and women take part. I can only sug- 
gest that a visit in the evening is often accept- 
able to members of the congregation, and that 
if it is arranged beforehand, fathers and sons 
will readily be present, and, if there be ser- 
vants, that they may also be seen, so that 
family religion, as well as that of individual 
consecration, may be promoted. This carries 
into effect, though in a less formal manner, the 
old Presbyterian notion of the pastor's visit. 

The congregation should be a body of 



PASTORAL WORK 267 

friends, and when this is the case they form 
one of the most important of the circles of 
which the whole social body is composed. The 
danger of exclusiveness or religious pride, no 
doubt, is a real one ; but we should do wrong 
to refrain from friendly union with those 
united to us in faith and prayer because it 
may be abused. It is most unnatural that 
people should worship side by side Sunday 
after Sunday and know nothing of each other. 
And I think that this union is best effected 
by some common purpose. In the numerous 
efforts of Christian endeavor there are, ready- 
made, the means of cooperation. And es- 
pecially when anything is done which may 
benefit the poorer members, the wealthier and 
more cultured may be asked to join and by 
working together to knit their bonds more 
strongly. The tendency to narrowness is best 
met by the social destination which it has been 
my object to vindicate for the Church. If my 
general theme has been true, we shall always 
endeavor to make our institutions not termi- 
nate in ourselves. A church brotherhood will 
not imply merely winning others to come to 
church, or confirmation, or sacrament, but, 
whether through these or apart from these, to 
the service of mankind in God's name. 



268 PASTORAL WORK 

We must look beyond the social circles which 
lie immediately at our door, and consider the 
effect which our church system may have 
upon the city and the nation, and all the rings 
or circles of society which they include. We 
have come to a stage in which successful com- 
merce and business transactions soon place a 
man in a kind of dominant position ; but the 
responsibility of such a position is rarely ad- 
mitted. And even politics, which, next to re- 
ligion, should be a sacred calling, are pursued 
without any adequate sense of their bearing 
on the well-being of mankind. I do not al- 
lude to the still baser degradation which both 
commerce and politics suffer at times from 
fraud or bribery. But I ask whether our 
church opinion is sound on these matters. Has 
it not been content with a few maxims which 
demand honesty generally while leaving the 
selfish motive to work itself out unrebuked ? 
We must rise to the true view that commerce 
and political Hfe are a service to God and 
man ; a responsible ministry into which no 
man has a right to enter merely for the sake 
of gain. It is difficult, no doubt, to maintain 
this standard. The common feeling is that 
if a man has money he need not work, that 



PASTORAL WORK 269 

i£ he devotes his whole life to accumulating 
money, he is quite in his right, and may- 
spend it as he pleases, that he may enter into 
political life with a view to his own advance- 
ment. And church opinion has never stead- 
ily set itself against this selfish view of things. 
But if we are sincere in worshiping a God 
who has redeemed us through labor and suf- 
fering and death, and who tells us that if we 
will come after Him we must take up his cross, 
it is impossible to allow this selfish spirit to 
prevail. We must show men not merely that 
they are to be honest, while trying to grasp 
all they can for their own advantage, but that 
they must begin by forsaking all for Christ's 
sake, and that their service henceforward, 
whether it brings gain or loss, must be wholly 
a self-denying service rendered to God on 
man's behalf. We shall never rise to this 
while we insist that secular caUings lie with- 
out the sphere of the Church. 

We must look yet further, and think of the 
interests, not merely of our own country or of 
the Anglo-Saxon race, but of the great soci- 
ety of mankind which is potentially, though 
by no means actually, the universal Church, 
the home of the living God ; and we must ask 



270 PASTORAL WORK 

how our worshiping societies may and do 
affect it. The late Mr. Charles Pearson, in his 
gloomy but suggestive work on the future of 
national character, draws a depressing picture 
of the decadence of the race. He thinks that 
the prospect is that the yellow and dark races 
will increase enormously, while the highly 
civilized white races will both diminish and be 
dragged down by the sheer pressure of num- 
bers, till all reach a uniform low level and life 
becomes flaccid and mean, devoid of all high 
interest. It is evident that in this pessimistic 
forecast the points of importance are, first, 
the comparative diminution of what are now 
the higher races ; second, the dark and yellow 
men never rising to the nobler condition of 
Christian energy and brotherhood. On both 
these our Christian institutions ought to ex- 
ert a counteracting influence. The plague 
spot of the limiting of families is known, 
but commonly ignored. The crime of it 
will never be fully recognized until we feel 
that we have all of us some responsibility, not 
for ourselves alone, but for the race. The 
population of France is at a standstill, if not 
diminishing. The birth rate in England has 
decreased in the last thirty years from thirty- 



PASTORAL WORK 271 

five per thousand to twenty-nine, and the re- 
sult of this on population is not fully seen, 
because, through the new sanitation, the death 
rate has so greatly declined. In some of our 
towns the evil practice has become so preva- 
lent that the schools cannot be filled. In 
America the vast increase of the population is 
due entirely to immigration ; after the first 
generation the fell marks of voluntary steriKty 
begin. In all the European nations the birth 
rate is decreasing, except in Russia, where it 
stands at more than forty for every thousand. 
Meanwhile China and India are increasing 
enormously. In India a single decade adds 
thirty millions. What is the meaning of the 
diminution of the white race ? It is simple 
materialism, the preference of comfort and 
ease for ourselves and our children to the fam- 
ily joys and the expansion which God from 
the first ordained for the race. ^^Be fruitful 
and multiply, replenish the earth and subdue 
it." Let all Christian teachers and workers 
lay this to heart, and let all who are growing 
up under their influence know that to refuse 
or to minimize the duty of parentage is a 
crime against God and the race of mankind. 
The direct influence which the civilized and 



272 PASTORAL WORK 

Christian races may exert upon the others is 
coming more and more to the front. We 
cannot escape from the " white man's burden." 
Commerce and locomotion, the desire to im- 
part knowledge, the wish to save souls, all make 
the task before us obligatory. It is becom- 
ing the very centre of interests. That the 
heathen races should see only the lust and 
greed and covetousness and violence of the 
Christian nations may well bring about the 
disastrous condition which Mr. Pearson an- 
ticipated. It is for the Christian Church in 
its largest sense to prevent this. Let the gos- 
pel be carried by our worshiping bodies to 
the people of China and of India ; and let those 
who guide our commercial, diplomatic, and 
political forces carry with them the justice 
and honesty which is another and a larger gos- 
pel. By the purification of our social life 
from within we may yet gain the power which 
will make the intercourse of the white races 
with the dark a blessing, not a curse. When 
they partake of our rehgion and our civiliza- 
tion, instead of dragging us down they will 
add their special gifts to ours in uplifting the 
world to God. 

But if this service of mankind is to be real 



PASTORAL WORK 273 

and successful, it must be a united service, 
and with a few remarks upon Christian union 
as bearing upon social progress these lectures 
will be brought to a close. The first condition 
of Christianity being effective as a social power 
is that it should cease from presenting to 
mankind the spectacle of continual disputes. 
Those within the circle of what are called 
church affairs may know how to minimize a 
controversy, and retain some real respect for 
those from whom they express their differ- 
ences perhaps with violence. But to those 
without the circle this will never appear. 
There is danger to the members of the socie- 
ties which foster these differences; for if, 
while they impart to their members some 
measure of Christian earnestness, they at the 
same time instill the venom of sectarianism, 
they run the danger of doing that which the 
Pharisees did when they made proselytes. 
But to the ordinary citizen the effect is al- 
ways repelling. He is apt to feel as Keble 
says one might feel if one could look into a 
soul torn with care and passion : " Who would 
not shun the dreary, uncouth place? " Pub- 
lic men naturally feel this, and it makes them 
slow to claim the sanctions of religion for 
their best, their social work. 



274 PASTORAL WORK 

In the various works of charity this dis- 
union is a great hindrance. Even in the 
simple matter of the relief of the poor, the 
warden of Toynbee Hall, Canon Barnett, has 
shown how the work is constantly vitiated 
by the denominations not cooperating. After 
all inquiries have been made, and every step 
taken by one denomination, or even by the 
Charity Organization Society, so as to deal 
with a case judiciously, the process will be 
marred by the agent of another denomina- 
tional society stepping in, and presenting to 
the poor person the temptation to concealment 
with a view to double relief. Men ask of 
every good work which is to be undertaken, 
" To what denomination does it belong ? '^ 
and if they hear that it does not belong to 
their own, they are apt to look coldly on it. 
It may be thought that there is less of this 
spirit than there was. But of this I am by 
no means sure. I fear it is not so in England. 
For instance, there is a society which has done 
magnificent work among the fishermen of the 
German Ocean, — the deep sea mission. It 
is not attached to any denomination, and so 
a " Church Deep Sea Mission " is advertised. 
Even the time-honored Society for Preventing 



PASTORAL WORK 275 

Cruelty to Animals has been lately confronted 
with a " Church Society for Kindness to Ani- 
mals." Even dumb creatures, it seems, must 
be affected by our religious differences. I 
confess that though I am a convinced church- 
man, yet when I hear the word " Church " 
attached to any scheme of benevolence, I feel 
that its good is marred; for it means, not that 
religious influences and pastoral care are to 
be applied, — that may easily be secured ; — 
but this, that clerical power will be supreme, 
and that no dissenters need apply. 

In missions to the heathen the case is still 
more serious ; for when the natives of India 
(I am quoting the words of a highly honored 
British statesman) see in a single street in 
Calcutta six establishments, each claiming to 
represent the Christian religion, but each sep- 
arated from the rest because it believes itself 
to do this better than the others, they natu- 
rally turn away from them all. The head of 
the Indian Brahmo Somaj told me a short 
time ago that Max Miiller had recommended 
them to become Christians. But he said, as I 
have heard his predecessor, Keshub Chunder 
Sen, say, " Into which of your religions am I 
to be baptized ? I cannot become a Christian 
simply." 



276 PASTORAL WORK 

It may be asked, perhaps, whether the 
larger, social conception of the Church, if 
accepted, would tend to destroj^ the distinc- 
tive forms in which men have come to unite 
in worship. It may be that it would tend to 
make the differences less rigorous. But the 
various worshiping bodies have been so com- 
pactly organized, with their buildings, their 
colleges, their history, that any diminution of 
them or any amalgamation, is not very likely 
to take place. More constant and friendly 
intercourse we may expect — we see it in 
many quarters. But what should be desired 
is that each sect should cease to call itself 
the Church ; and that no combination of sects 
should be supposed to represent the Church 
as a whole; that we should look upon the 
whole Christian society to which we belong 
as Christ's Church, and should think of the 
worshiping bodies as subordinate societies 
voluntarily uniting for prayer and Christian 
instruction. However many there may be 
of such bodies, and however they may vin- 
dicate their right of independent manage- 
ment, they will no longer incur the reproach 
of dividing the Church, when they confess 
that the Church is the great social organism, 



PASTORAL WORK 277 

to which in their varying degrees they min- 
ister. 

I am aware that we must not look for im- 
mediate results by great schemes o£ reunion. 
But neither must we sit still amidst the evils 
of disunion. We must take every means for 
drawing together, especially by mutual con- 
ference, so as to know and understand each 
other. But by far the most hopeful means of 
cooperation lies in that social progress which 
we have been considering. If we are con- 
vinced that the kingdom of God means not 
primarily ordinances and secondarily right- 
eousness, but primarily Christian righteous- 
ness, which is the same as social progress, and 
then, as a secondary thing, rehgious ordi- 
nances directed towards this end, a great deal 
will have been done to remove this great hin- 
drance of sectarianism. We shall then be able 
to feel that we belong to the great and true 
Church, the Church of God and of human- 
ity, which is working out the Christian evolu- 
tion of society by all the means, public and 
private, which the constitution of society pre- 
sents ; and we shall be able to say with a good 
conscience to all mankind : Join us in the 
great object of the Church ; worship where 



278 PASTORAL WORK 

you think best, or where this great object is 
best pursued. But in whatever form, let us 
work together towards the building up of 
human relations in the spirit of Christ; for 
that is the object for which God made men to 
live together in society. 



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